Book One - from Public Books

How can we bear this inherited shame
Which has happened again
Our shame that ruin
is possible
The cities have spoiled; knowledge collapsed
Chopped limbs are tossed in trenches
Grotesque trophies flash on computer screens
are hawked in magazines
We grubbed in the ruins without georgics or husbandry
Plagues took us, aqueducts clogged
The sanitary engineers were perished
When the last glasses broke, no one had any more

Then saints taught us purity lies in the heart
We cooked up crude soap in stupid black kettles
People said angels explain it.

Shenandoah Elegy

People who can’t recover from the war
sit on the front porch
saw the chair rockers against the wood floor
and watch the valley’s slow tide
green up
and die away
Paint on the porch banister fades and peels
Kind hands bring dinner plates
fried yams, pork chops
The seasons peak and recede across graying fields
Agitated starlings follow the hay cutters
It is replaced
People who can’t recover from the war
sit
for fifty years
names on a slab or
on the tongue of a grandmother, remembering
A valley famous for the hate of women
ambiguous as
the smoky eyes of its gray veterans