Collected Poems

of his rising their kinsman

avenged in murder would turn

away from them in obedience

to other fraternities, would turn indeed

their own accuser and in one

breath obliterate their plea

and justification! So they killed

him a second time that day on the

threshold of a promising resurrection.

Vultures

In the grayness

and drizzle of one despondent

dawn unstirred by harbingers

of sunbreak a vulture

perching high on broken

bone of a dead tree

nestled close to his

mate his smooth

bashed-in head, a pebble

on a stem rooted in

a dump of gross

feathers, inclined affectionately

to hers. Yesterday they picked

the eyes of a swollen

corpse in a waterlogged

trench and ate the

things in its bowel. Full

gorged they chose their roost

keeping the hollowed remnant

in easy range of cold