THE BLACK PAWN SPINS A TALE OF INNOCENCE
The innocent have nothing to fear
even if it kills them.
The innocent, who will be invited late
some night into a field and there be asked
to kneel under the most gathered of stars.
The innocent, who are, in some sense,
the very least. The sick and the cold
should be on their guard; the pragmatic
and the efficient-you'll get yours in the end;
but the innocent? Well, no harm no foul.
Those of you who are poor, those of you
who are not poor but are in the way of the powerful,
and those of you who are beautiful-good luck.
Those of you defended by cowards?
Leave your names here _______________________.
But as for the innocent, well, don't bother to hide,
it's not necessary. The unlucky? I'm sorry.
And you there, the stupid? Hmmmm.
Those of you who are imaginative, brave,
humorous, or even, perhaps, useful,
don't look now, but you've built your castle on sand.
As for the innocent-and I'm here I'm speaking
of the truly innocent, and not just those in a position
to count the votes-you have nothing to fear.
And there's nothing you can do about it anyway.
WHAT THE BLACK ROOK PREFERS
Carp seem to prefer rivers
but I like to haunt bones.
Sometimes I see you looking at me like you're blond
and want to take me out to a grotto.
But I am barely flesh, and pellucid, like the reflection
of a cello seen on the skin of a violin.
I like to twice inculcate virginities and I'm over
the sparrow, now, because that was months ago.
From the rump of crows, and from the horizon-
one lugubrious twitch, as I choose to live on the gorge of a lake;
me with my short, thick fingers that have a salt smell
as I've been holding them, all eight, under the bra of the sea.
Kestrels prefer cliffs but I like to haunt cameras, letting my face
float into and out of focus, making a film of my "Wait!"
Some people prefer to store their dirks
in scabbards but I prefer fjords.
THE WHITE QUEEN DESCRIBES AN ATTACK OF INSOMNIA
One night I couldn't sleep
so it began to snow.
If crows in the morning were its milk,
then the hours of that night were unironable silk.
It was a hard snow, with darkness sticking to it
like hush to a library.
The wind was carrying news. Outside, leaving bars,
snowmen and women were built as they waited for cabs.
Through the trees the whisk of a mile long broom
-the start of a conversation with no bull's eye.
But this is really why I was awake-
there in the clouds a bridegroom was being torn
into shreds of lake, then falling through dark
like dreams fall through a skull with no eyes.
BLACK KING REMEMBERS HIS FATHER
When I was ten my father brought me a pet.
Not one he got from a shelter or a friend,
or from the newspaper. He'd been hunting deer
when he was confronted with a pack of wild dogs.
Most of them he killed, but one he caught
and brought home to me. I wasn't equal to my dog.
I was afraid to fall asleep with it in my room.
I trembled to think what it was thinking as it paced
in front of the fireplace.
But I could tell the beast respected my father,
as did I. We'd both seen what he could do.
My father, who was never chastened by anyone.
Except my mother.
And look what's happened to her.
