66
Smashed on the pavement up ahead
one mauled wing lifting in the wind
lies a hawk. -- No; fooled by a torn cement bag
I'd already seen on the way up; and I see
your crescent cruising the blue
straight overhead -- worn out,
gauze-thin, yourself bluish, you lean,
take in this piddling incident.
One for the laments our time begets:
where I grew up the October moon
used to rise huge from behind
the Arms boys' paintless barn with its gambrel
roof and rooster vane, on the round hill
across the draw two farms away --
fi t for a thirties postcard photograph.
Both Arms boys are dead. The barn got torn down
and its weather-silvered boards hauled off for use
in bars, barbecue joints and such -- as for
the round hill -- the 'dozers fl attened it
for fi ll. What the moon rises on over there
tonight is not worth glancing toward.
Out to mail a letter
and there it is --
the midmorning moon which
Stravinsky in his last year
of life, after surgery,
said he was pale as
(a glass of champagne
left standing overnight