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Deborah's Lament
When I speak in anger he cannot hear me.
He hears murderous strangers
enter the home of the blameless patron,
upset his writing table and its rosined drawers,
dragging bootmarks across the words he loves,
setting his books on fire.
He hears the song of renegades,
the mercurial chord of their laughter rising,
the glide of a blade against his ear.
He hears the clicking of stones and dowels,
widows' tears and the brainsick whine
of children possessed, the cackle of fishwives
and frenzied geese crowding his hall.
He hears a skeletal army
tapping weaponry against his gate,
soliciting conscript in every quarter.
A swarm of bees would stun him less.
AUBADE
I have watched you before daylight,
half awake and half returned
from some morning dream with a slight
sadness, as if you had just learned
to make the one impossible choice
your heart, at first, would not admit.
You seem to bend toward a certain voice,