When night – silent and bottomless –
Descends upon the field, drained in battle,
The sorrowful Madonna steps once more
To where death once stood in ranks.
With slender fingers, from the leaden haze,
She quietly gathers into her grassy hem
The sharp fragments that, in the frozen field,
Sprouted as steel blossoms by the morning.
She washes every jagged edge with dew,
Heals the scar upon the burned armor,
And tears through the trembling blue with her being,
To give the old pain to the heights.
She scatters sorrow across the dome of the heavens –
Fiery signs of the constellations of Casings and Arrows.
Where poppies gasped in black blood,
The abyss will pour a starry compress.
This age tastes bitter with both gunpowder and dreams,
Glistening with iron – hollow and stern.
This is our memory – a scorched sea,
Hardening beneath molten glass.
Night Harvest
23