Then came, with time, a sort
of deadening.  Then came
the birds that woke me,
dishabille, while I was dreaming
of satiety, gaiety, the blood
of my boot-black heart.

People are people, but the world
feels elegiac, somehow, now:
if I perish, I perish, said Esther;
and if I am bereaved of my
children, I am bereaved.  
It’s déjà vu all over again:

the undecideds cannot make
up their minds, and our nation
must come together to unite.
Part of the problem is vernacular:
the different ways we describe,
or is that experience, the mistral breeze.  

A tautology is true by definition:
it has no possibility of being false.
We ask from God what we ask
of art:  to be changed.  We ask
to be more than frantic bleats
enduring a steady rhythm of whips.  

What is there to say of earth?  
It seeks redress, but silently.
Who can translate the forked tongue
of the plow, the lathe, the scythe?  
I am not a man-made implement.  
This, the autobiography of a life.

Virginia Konchan

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