In the staccato of our pulses, a chorus waits sotto voce for the impromptu release of Orpheus. His lyre is without strings, bent into a bow, his intermezzo torn from thunder. In the hush, the flautist fingers his stops with bleeding joints. Stumbling on broken feet, the dancer vanishes in intervals. Under the female moon we invent omens.
Infants wail in the darkness.
Our anguish sings in absent voices in the silence between remembered tenderness and rediscover fear. We haves suffered ourselves naked to them drawing blood from our veins in the names of many. We find solace in breasts swollen for the sons of many fathers, reading each wasted drop in a unbroken pool. Battlestrong, we hoist earth for the tombs of our sons and demure our daughters to the warrior captains. Number each of them blindly speaking of each death as fruitful.