one
strange son
I am a youth of pale shins and oblique shoulders, matrons retreat from me bonneted with silence,
eyes piously aslant like orientals woven in a cloth, even though I am as occidental
as a river in Kansas
and held my gun for valor.
It is often difficult to tell
if the rope around my neck was meant for a thief or a sacrificial goat. Even I might know, were I composed of sublimation and zeal, and not merely a sum of ever-lost and found complexities.
Grimmer begotten ones dare come to ask me where my landmarks will be, where my premises.
Should I then burn the ivy that swaddles my tower,
and expose the inner mortal in a time when no one respects a wicker cage full of starlings?
by David Cornel DeJong
16