Look To The Earth
Prophet, why do you stare up at the sky?
What is to come, unglobed and nebulous.
arrives with nothing that can be foreseen
by studying those ragged clouds and stars;
that dark bird floats only on the air,
that dog is baying only at the moon.
Only the past is ominous. Look down:
look to the days that thicken underfoot,
the globed past, ridged in the shapes of time,
Search out the ulcered shell, the yellow film,
for there the crust will give, there pale steam
spiral in acrid threads from a raw crack
and nostrils twitch to the rising smell of fear:
look to that omen. lest a stifled breath,
a racked ache in the spine, a pulse and snap
of the skull report how swiftly time can split --
look to the earth! for even the dark bird
stoops now like a vulture, and see! the dog
paws and snuffs the ground with strangled growls.
The shell is thinner there. See! at your feet.
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