Classic Poem

I know I'm more alone than ever.
My life's a rainy ending.
How can I watch time
with all its strength drag sheep
in broken chariots?
How can I see rivers of blood flowing
from the skulls of infants
just before they sleep
or wait for years to heal
the festering Arab wound?
or blunt the sleepless thorns
that crucify my brain?
In all that I remember
there are dancers planting the axes
of war against those cultivated murderers,
those civilized bulls
that are the judges of our courts.
I feel in my blood
like hurt birds
the presence of shepherds and evenings.

I stand in God's creation
like a sun wrapped in grief.
I receive telegrams of tragedy
that must be answered.
There are no seasons anymore,
just life.

Who knows how rocks stand guard
like flowers from the tropics
around the field of massacres?
Who understands the dialects of sorrow
that survived when Cordoba was slain,
and now Beirut?

The princes are recovering from colds
they caught in the brothels of politics.

Leave me to sadness.
The clouds have broken many a man with rain,
and winter is a snake among the tatters of the poor.
Leave me to find some sweetness
from the spirit of aging serpents.
Leave me to the nothingness of sip after sip
of coffee.
Distance has destroyed us,
and a single bird keeps vigil
over bayonetted bellies
like a laurel of havoc.