Song

A silver Cytherean nymph, its wings translucent
like a dragonfly seen through sunlight,
skimmed on the surface of desolate cornfields
whose beloved stalks had felt the solemn kiss of the scythe.

Her eyes were mourning like the dew. The dawn had pressed
its fingers through a lattice that had not remembered
to accept the growing tangled vines or mountains
with their dying spines.

Using gold-capped crooked teeth, she pulled a thread
from ancient sheets and wrapped it soft inside her hair
(her heart and mine like breasts
laid bare upon the thin veneer of love affairs).
She trembled and on a rough-hewn hedge
of stolid stone she began to sing:

Fisher King, Fisher King,
are your empty nets the fault of the sea?