Civil War

The dead bird is a kind of song.

I think about the end of Lorca, the act of loyalty,
the incidental things.

And I wonder what we’ve really discovered,
what anyone truly knows before their exile.

Maybe just this: that both sides of a double-sided coin
can be wrong.
That anything moral is a dilemma.

According to Spanish legend, the king of crickets
steals the voices of boys,
leaving them mute.

According to you, this is why you’re here:
for the truce-making.
And for the words.

Credit

Copyright © 2017 by Rosemarie Dombrowski. Published in The Philosophy of Unclean Things, (Finishing Line Press, 2017). Used with the permission of the author.