Woe, Said the Rooster
In the village the rooster crows at noon
because morning has been postponed.
The sun sits on a crate behind the store,
smoking, waiting for instructions.
Woe to us, says the old woman
who sells candles shaped like saints.
She lights one for justice,
but it drips sideways
and sets fire to the price list.
In the town hall they have a machine
that washes words.
You put in “theft,”
it returns “adjustment.”
You put in “hunger,”
it returns “diet.”
The mayor smiles with newly laundered verbs.
Last week they buried a lie
with full honors.
The priest cleared his throat
and called it “a complicated truth.”
The choir sang softly
so the dirt would not feel accused.
I went to the river.
It was carrying empty bottles
and one small mirror.
I looked into it and saw my own mouth
rehearsing agreement.
Woe to that mouth, I said,
and the fish scattered like punctuation.
At night the cows kneel in the field.
They know something about gravity.
They chew darkness patiently.
They do not rename the grass.
In the bakery, bread rises beautifully.
It smells of childhood and policy.
You break it open
and a thin dust escapes,
like a parliament of flour
voting itself white.
Woe to the clever ones
who weigh the wind
and invoice the horizon.
Woe to the rest of us
who clap because the echo is warm.
But under the shed, in a cracked bucket,
a seed has begun its stubborn prayer.
No committee approved it.
No slogan protected it.
It split itself in two
without asking what to call the dark.
Call evil evil,
says the rooster again,
late, hoarse, magnificent.
Call good good,
before the dictionary grows teeth
and eats the field.
Morning will not attend meetings.
It will simply arrive,
mud on its boots,
and stand in the yard
until we recognize it.
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