The New Pastoral
The first man had flint to spark. He had a wheel
to read his world
I'm in the dark.
I am a lost, last inhabitant—
displaced person
in a pastoral chaos.
All day I listen to
the loud distress, the switch and tick of
new herds.
But I'm no shepherdess.
Can I unbruise these sprouts or clean this mud flesh
till it roots again?
Can I make whole
this lamb's knuckle, butchered from its last crooked suckling?
I could be happy here,
I could be something more than a refugee
were it not for this lamb unsuckled, for the nonstop
switch and tick
telling me
there was a past,
there was a pastoral,
and these chance sights
what are they all
but amnesias of a rite
I danced once on a frieze?
