for Alistair MacLeod
Sometimes things are the same everywhere,
That’s also what you taught me.
There’s mist and wind and the sound of waves,
The sound of rain and time passing,
The sound that home is never far
And follows you like a sea, wherever you go.
They could not decide what to take first,
So they took everything.
They took everything and promised to return,
So the others took the nothing
They had left and hid it away.
They had no trouble hiding it.
Weeks later they returned
Demanding the nothing they left behind.
The others refused, they refused,
Claiming nothing was all they had.
So they went away to plan.
They sent their scouts
To search for the nothing.
They searched all morning.
They peered into forests.
They overturned rocks.
They parted the water
But always found something.
Determined to find nothing
They said to surrender nothing
Or be slaughtered,
But the others refused
And prepared for battle.
So the battle lasted years.
They forgot about nothing
And kept killing over nothing.
Bodies burned into nothing.
Nothing was left behind.
Legend has it, nothing was never found.
To this day there is still nothing.
All at once nature was old;
It touched the roots of gold–
And darkness, made of light,
Cast a shadow vast as night.
Soldiers wouldn’t fight.
Drones got lost in flight.
Artists grew so cold
Marble left them unconsoled.
All at once we saw
In each a universal flaw:
Earth was a child
Born to be reviled.
Believers couldn’t believe,
Mourners couldn’t grieve.
Warmongers went to hell
For the sin of living well.
Politicians couldn’t lie.
Polluters wouldn’t try.
Everything went opposite
The direction of profit.
All at once the earth died;
Civilization, left untried–
And darkness, made of night,
Cast a shadow vast as light.
From desperation repossessed,
From marriages divorced in debt,
From suicides in garnishment,
One coin of empire in demise.
From families in ruin,
From homes that were lost,
From hope appropriated,
One coin of empire in demise.
From mask of Mammon,
From fear and war,
Just such interest is accrued,
One coin of empire in demise.
The cries of hyenas are human cries
The teeth of the lion are human
Jaws of crocodiles are human jaws
Our blood changes into venom
We destroy our own young
We hunt the young of others
We smell slaughter on the wind
Why then consider ourselves separate
If we walk in animal footprints
Why number our tribes
If migrations end in murder
Why give a name to creation
If the same wild God destroys it
The most noxious landfill is language.
Books are polluted; libraries, dump sites.
Due to toxic levels of pathetic fallacy
Bookstores have been closed by the Board of Health.
All reading, boycotted by Greenpeace.
Why must a cloud be forever lonely?
Why must the sea be always cruel?
Our books are fairy-tales for grownups
With magical forests of sad birds, evil snakes,
Happy flowers and gloomy trees,
Where we sit in the melancholy shade,
Ourselves the center of the universe
And seldom consider the rivers of refuse
Created by culture’s industrial waste.
What are they doing on my road,
Those hawk feathers?
What does it mean that I have no more masks?
How will I survive the loss of everything?
I see a warrior spirit
Wearing feathers of the sun.
I hear the war cry of change.
I hesitate above my shadow,
The earth is flying,
My totem grows stronger,
Wings lift me into air.
I’ll heal by this magic or not at all.
Our German
Midfield general
His legs could march to Stalingrad
No one was more fanatical
About football
Bavarian Aryan Manfred
Bundesliga youth
Manfred invaded space
Engineered perfect goals
Was our Beethoven
And bomber
Indestructible
As a thing-in-itself
Three brain tumors
Killed Manfred
Leaving devastation
In the field of play
The neighborhood would never be the same.
If evil is anything it is change.
The convent was carried up to heaven
In clouds of demolition smoke.
I swear the trees were trembling
And the people were afraid.
Rose garden and grotto gripped
Hallowed ground and bled.
I saw the sad sisters of the order
Wander off in strange disorder,
Though the Devil survived his shattered grave,
Hobbling from the ruined conclave.
Salvatore Ala 