Earthquake Triolet
Quakes in China, the seaboard shelf. Whose faults
are these? I think I know. Inside the house
the windows shake. Some plaster falls.
China quakes on the cupboard shelf. Whose faults
are these: TV filling up with snow, some false
all-clears some decades back. I think I know the hows —
but whys… a China Syndrome of halts
and starts somewhere where the core is housed.
♦
Lot’s Wife
– after Akhmatova
His massive shadow thrown against the mountain,
God’s bright messenger beckoned
them climb higher. If only for a second,
she whispered to herself, look back and count
the sunset towers of your Sodom,
the square in which you sang, the loom
and stool through the window of the room
where your husband ate his garden
greens and children slept beneath your cover. Clear salt
tears nearly sealed her eyes. And she, so moved,
refused to move, bound unto this place she loved
while bound toward another. Halting
there, she glanced behind. Whose tears replenish
hers whose backward gaze would root her
halfway up a mountain between the past and future,
arms full of the nothing she could not relinquish?
♦
The Old Country
And then, through the crack house
door – stars rolling up in sequence –
all tinny and cheap, like sequins,
when he thought of Prague’s, or Krakow’s
♦
Steve Kronen‘s books are Empirical Evidence and Splendor. His website is stevekronen.com.
