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THE
DEVIL AND THE DEVIL
The
baby worries with an eight-day frown
as
if it has lived eighty years already,
rejects
its mother’s breast, takes to the bottle.
At
the gates of the hospital a beggar turns
in
his night carton mumbling obscenities
at
sylvan memories to keep them buried.
Who said
the
godliest living is now? Hostages,
chained
years in cellars in Rubble City,
invent
games, pidgin languages, bad jokes
to
take them out of themselves and out of time.
Cold
sleep thrusts us under hooves and draws us
back
to the womb’s coffin to stifle and wail
for
a stake through the heart before the heart awakes
to
the mistaken glories of the dragonfly
or
a lucky dog’s continual anxiety:
to
cause which in the beginning a god
was
broken into two and will not heal.
Alan
Marshfield
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