Bass clef of Cygnus’ throat,
Orion’s brute cudgel,
and all you stars that burn
without name or need
for anything more
than your own terminal light,
what is it to exist
without desire,
to be part of a distant myth,
powerless to grant
or refuse a single thing
but still wished upon
as you fall like tracers
in some far-off war
I am ashamed to know
so little of.
What is it to have no father
who slouches across
the grainy fields of nightmare,
the moon’s sallow glow
turned the colour of rust
by the copper that covers
his eyes, the staggered
scuff of his shoes
tugging the grass
like ruminant mouths
that tongue a language
unfathomable
as the horizons you lantern?
What is it to have no word
for the way I can’t remember him
before his lungs
were shadowed like a Rorschach
for the doomed?
Tell me,
you who have never
drawn in the scent of sweetgrass,
of a woman or rain,
what prayer might I,
who have no faith in any gods,
spend the last small coin
of my breath upon?
Only this.
That my flesh might rise
from the flames
that will consume it,
a constellation of cinders
in the shape of a man
who turns the final, brief radiance
of his face toward
your distant fires
to wonder, once more,
at your beautiful indifference.