Ancestors
On Sunday afternoon
with a low headache
I think of innumerable beings
tortured to death
so that I could be
vague, dissatisfied, ill at ease
writing just these words;
they learned to breathe
in the ovens of primeval beaches,
one in a million,
deformed, faceless, stinking in the rot,
crawling toward the next
breath, or
God's heavy foot.
The stars we know
with angelic indifference shone
alike on the dumb rock,
the oceans endlessly grinding, and,
between,
the ancestors struggling
up, up, lightward --
Now in the papers
I see they have learned to read
messages from those angels
that turn the key of being in the lock,
opening up the
furnaces of creation,
it is child's play:
is and is not
tremble in the balance
of an angel's childish hands;
the dark faces on the fiery sands
nothing to them,
nothing the heat
and the dread, their -- our -- ancient fury.
copyright © 1998 Gordon Fitch