Return

S'pose I could send this to a mag, but hell, that'd take ages and I wrote it for TODAY!

Return

What the earth takes, it gives again: look,
do not fathers, brothers, sons rise

from the ground, their eyes shaded, in case
they hanker for the dark? Do not

marriages restart from this minute,
like a stopped clock set going again,

are not hasty words, that might have been
last words, now air? Each tenant, his leasehold

on light renewed, is given back the world,
we too: how not, even though we know

few are paroled, none pardoned. Just now
they stand for all who were not granted leave

and will not be, as if indeed love
could go down deep enough to bring us back.