The Gods As They Are, On Their Planets - The Poet's Press

tossed markers
into the outraged waves.
Whose adolescents did this,
town fathers?
Yours.
Stunted by rock and stunned by drugs,
they came to topple a few old slabs,
struck them because they could not
strike you.
Let them summon their dusky Devil,
rock lyric and comic and paperback,
blue collar magic, dime store demons —
they wait and wait,
blood dripping from dead bird sacrifice
until the heavy truth engages them:
The dead are dead,
magic is empty ritual,
and stubborn Satan declines
to answer a teen-age telegram.
Fence in your children, not our stones!
TO THE ARC OF THE SUBLIME
In nights beneath the stars,
sometimes alone — sometimes
with one I loved
(in futile or secret urgency) —
I have outwaited
the rise and fall of Scorpio,
arc of its tail
stinging the treetops.
I have traced the inconstant moon,
the indecisive Venus;
feel more assured
by the long, slow haul of Jupiter,
the patient tread of Pluto
(whom they pursue
in their frigid outer orbits
I cannot guess)
Such solitude,
millennia between
the fly-bys of comets,
perhaps is why
they need so many moons,
why rings of ice
encircle them like loyal cats.
16