The Millennial Pedestrian

Dung

The elephants are fading
in a whispering stampede.
A plain once dancing
with electric life
now silent.
Not completely:
you can hear the wind.

The wind is elephants
lions storks and oryxes
and all their thoughts,
the ones they had
when they were living
and the ones they still have
now they’re spirits.
The wind is used to rubbing
up against the animals.
It exhausts itself
searching for them.
Soon the wind will blow itself
into the yellow empty sky,
will vanish.

We dream of life
as we see life retreat
beyond the brush,
beyond the desert heat.
Our dreams have grown
more lifelike than our lives.
In them we see ourselves as hunters,
swift and strong in sleek pursuit
of beasts far stronger and far swifter,
sacred with the gift of nourishment
for our bodies and our souls.

Now insects clatter
through the pebbles
searching vainly for some dung
to push
and in our strange dejected capital
they gather
for the only food that’s left to them.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 28th, 2006.
It's part of the New Poems category.
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