Anne Simpson

Night was woven through with what we said,

a Persian rug, patterned with random stars.

We sat on the windowsill of a ruined

farmhouse, all of us quiet after talking.

Weeds lay tangled below, a great square

of something intricate, unknown,

and I thought how it could be caught

by four corners: a carpet lifted

into the dark, undulating up and up.

I might have been pulled into the blue-black,

too high, too far, but something called me

back. Yesterday, kayaking, I recalled it

near a silver stretch where herons gather

at low tide. Just beyond,

water runs deeper, faster, the eel grass

slowly brushed this way and that, farther

down. We’d paddled back the wrong way,

though I liked the shallows and then

the cool green deeps. There, before us, birds

ascended as if drawing something

with them, the sheen of water, a wavering

transparency. We could see the slant

of fields, scattered houses and barns,

orange buoys comically bobbing,

and currents opening to reveal,

lower down, many liquid stairways.

The Triumph of Death

These watches. Ticking, still. Each hour is cold:

the rims surround quick voices. Shut in rooms.

Gone. Tick. The towers. Tock. A fold

in air. We’re smoke, drifting. A painted doom

where cities burn and ships go down. Death’s

dark sky – a grainy docudrama. Time

swings bones on circus wheels. Listen: wind’s breath,

a shriek. Theatrum Mundi. In their prime,

the living. Leapt. That buckling of the knees.

Then gunshots: plastic bags on fences. Snapping.

Or loose. Thank you – shop – at. The lovers see

nothing. He plays a lute. She sings. Clapping –

machines sift through debris for the remains.

A sales receipt, a shoe. The silvery rain.

This is the woman you don’t know,

— unnamed, undone —

though you’ve heard how she turned

for a last look and that

was that. No time

for those twelve chapters

to creative awakening, with accompanying

exercises. Lot kept his head

down. Why is it that a woman can’t

give up what’s already gone? We all know

what curiosity plus cat equals. This time

God snapped his fingers,

reduced the city to ash,

along with two of Lot’s daughters, sons-in-law,

twins in the polks-dot stroller,

rattles on the rug,

a whatnot full of souvenirs:

the straw donkey from Spain, clay vase

from Mexico with the crack in it. Dishes

still in the sink, phone off the hook

and the voice of the angel

echoing loud in everyone’s ear.

Told you so.

                                                                      After that

who was left

to pick up the pieces? Soon Lot was sleeping

with his younger daughters,

but it was all so dreamlike. Across the plain,

the city kept burning. People made little cries

of distress, flames leapt

from one building

to another. Smoke filled the air.