Where Mystery Flowered into Any Hands that Longed for It

Amorously all night long it rained

Over certain obscure routes of Vicksburg

There where desire stayed clear-sighted

If the river needed to rest for a while

Well we supposed we did too

Obey our voices we said adore us

There we felt our skin and each sense 
Have its own night

There we saw shattered eyes 
Open in the morning sky

There where the roads we followed in our solitude

Abandoned us at daybreak

New dawns were rising

Wonder of wisteria

The pendulous heavy-scented flowers

Drooping in lavender bunches

We felt the slow-choke vines

Take decades to kill a tree

We squeezed mystery out of the single breath

Issuing from our innermost places 

In that last horizon

Voices we heard no longer

Came from familiar things

All the cell phones went kaput

So they wouldn’t have to pity 

Cracked voices anymore

In that last horizon

We heard eternity in the sunrise

That smashed our voices

And what could we say we who loved

We who loved the people clever as machines

In that last horizon happy birds

Fell headlong in the river

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