Update
In this life, dying isn’t new
but living is no newer.
—Sergei Yesenin
Even Raphael, despite his sternness, admitted
to lovemaking with the lower angels of Heaven.
There’s joy in paradise, he said. And without love,
no happiness. Though the fires intensified, Earth
sang its sermons of wind. Eid in Gaza. Molly
and vodka in the brutalist basements of Kiev.
If you look deeply into Goya’s shadows
you’ll find your country: the Palestinian activist
hadn’t been charged, but met his newborn son
through the plexiglass of a Louisiana prison.
Winter gave into spring, men kneeling
to more terrible men. Wrens in the branches
of the redbuds were a study of restraint.
Imagine Yesenin’s farewell in English:
the two dots of living and his wrist still glistening
with blood as he tied a rope to the rafters.
Adam’s final view from Paradise was hellish:
Enforcer angels, leprosy. Yesterday a fiction
on God’s lips as Adam followed Eve
into the scarred plains, their backs to the Garden.