1608: Graves We Filled Before the Fire | Gabrielle Calvocoressi
"Graves We Filled Before the Fire"
Gabrielle Calvocoressi
Some lose children in lonelier ways:
tetanus, hard falls, stubborn fevers
that soak the bedclothes five nights running.
Our two boys went out to skate, broke
through the ice like battleships, came back
to us in canvas bags: curled
fossils held fast in ancient stone,
four hands reaching. Then two
sad beds wide enough for planting
wheat or summer-squash but filled
with boys, a barren crop. Our lives
stripped clean as oxen bones.
You want the perpetuity of circles/A horizon clear and unbroken/And the sky a flat blue immensity/Without sides or depth
Gabrielle Calvocoressi
Some lose children in lonelier ways:
tetanus, hard falls, stubborn fevers
that soak the bedclothes five nights running.
Our two boys went out to skate, broke
through the ice like battleships, came back
to us in canvas bags: curled
fossils held fast in ancient stone,
four hands reaching. Then two
sad beds wide enough for planting
wheat or summer-squash but filled
with boys, a barren crop. Our lives
stripped clean as oxen bones.
You want the perpetuity of circles/A horizon clear and unbroken/And the sky a flat blue immensity/Without sides or depth