Last Days

^{Rain and ashes seal my lips
                                          —Allen Ginsberg}

In the season of drought and hurricane, 
this stiff earth cracks and the spawned 
eggs of mosquitoes burst into a plague 
of coughs and side stitches. Every wild bird 
predicts a plague of woes. All around us 
the whisper is of “Last Days”, the coming 
of the end, and the tyranny of present danger.

December 21, 2005, Marvin Williams, 
ex-Drill Sergeant and born-again Arkansas 
cotton-picker, remembers the morning he 
was bumped from the airliner that flamed 
over Lockerbie. Blessed, he says, trying 
to calculate the debts he still owes. 
Why was he kept; for what?

The dragonflies are dying, 
and in the suburbs the pandemic 
runs amok. Our bodies betray us 
and the summer’s heat warms 
the sea, as deep as plummet sounds. 
In the desert it rains in deluge, 
while the glaciers vanish from mountains. 
The stars die a million years ago.

On a beach in Bahia, 
a congregation in white descends 
to the water’s edge, singing. The surf lips 
the disembowelled carcasses of small 
animals. A rash of flowers eddies 
on the swollen surface like a garland of prayer.

Better go to the house of mourning 
than to the house of feasting.