Les plus lus ▸
Dave Bonta
Deflesh them with bone knives.
Let the wolves and ravens deflesh them.
Gather them into skin bags and bury them under the hearth.
Feed them beer.
Dig them up every fall and dance with them.
Dig ditches around them so the uninitiated cannot get too close.
Build mounds over them so the otherworld can ascend and be closer to us.
Organize them by size and type.
Rearrange them into new, mash-up ancestors.
Break them so they will not follow us in our dreams.
Suck out the marrow so their spirits will protect us in our dreams.
Burn them and place them in jars of clay decorated with rows of pits, as from missing teeth.
Erect stones around them in a circle so they will remember us who stand in the light.
today is the first holy day
we observe by living
almost any gland is worth a dinner
so full and so giving
who should we age into
if not a shoe
Once again, at the gates of another year.
In this endless desert
The New Year sits like a façade,
A prop
On the other side of which
The endless desert continues.
We will go through the rituals
Of living, loving, playing and crying
Bringing and burying lives-
The perfunctory calls and messages
‘Happy New Year’-
We will go on with the play-acting,
Feigning interests new
Bidding farewells to old.
We conjure up illusions of oases
When all around the desert spreads.
All my life
I have been half deaf.
In my room
I steam rice, make tea,
dress myself
to meet people.
I make them tell me
their names twice,
then help them as I can.
Though I play no lute,
I hope they will feel
as though hearing one
lilt among trees.
Five o’clock! You pause ...
Handle frail, old cups, pour tea,
And become grande dame.
This deep yet unfilled night
Has rites;
A worship, a dance, and speech;
A passion play of leaves and light,
Singing and sounding
Without noise, without life,
Of its own immense intangibility,
"Trance-bedimmed" and silence-bright.
Two or three angels
Came near to the earth.
They saw a fat church.
Little black streams of people
Came and went in continually.
And the angels were puzzled
To know why the people went thus,
And why they stayed so long within.
Kindle the Christmas brand, and then
Till sunset let it burn;
Which quench'd, then lay it up again,
Till Christmas next return.
Part must be kept, wherewith to teend
The Christmas log next year;
And where 'tis safely kept, the fiend
Can do no mischief there.