Reminded him, if his eyes rose,
Of another cold ex ile, of the masses
Rising, of a red army advancing on a white
Plain. The young girl in the house
Behind mine is singing "When The Saints
Come Marching In " in Spanish. The mounting
Music quickens her chore of sweeping
Petals from the porch . Already she glories
In her role as alto in the Pentecostal choir.
Mama plays percussion patting tortillas.
The necessary pigs and rooster listen to the light
Voice as it conjures the coming wonder of the second
Meal. Snapped from the stem, hibiscus
Wilts in the hand on the way to water;
Girls sing highly in other-worldly robes;
And Trotsky, mindful of white birches,
Prayed for one purge and execution too many
As the sun-fi lled axe flew down. Vision
Descended , revealed on its palms fresh wounds of fact.
Clayton Eshleman
VOLUNTARY PRAYER
A reopened carton of cream
whose encrusted top, left open a week
in refrigerator dark,
is the soul of a genuine nun
or the volcano held captive in the bell
of a water-spider. The deeper one goes,
the more truth seems horizontal,
