Z Flies

Part of the reason is the desire
to keep pace with the frantic show
of tomorrow, yesterday in the bin
swept toward the infinity of amnesias.
Everything is a deliberate parable,
the fly who drifts away
with his delicious meals, unretrievable -
that wiley thief -
to the great dreams we cannot recall.
Limbo! Oh paradise of purgatories
is the hell of the ancients, this sphere
a masterpiece of vain and partial speeches.
The people come and go, unaware, save a few.
They wipe their brows, carry bricks and lipsticks,
dance their jigs. Everyone is so familiar here
with marks on their foreheads to the tightening
of their ears. Smiles, sighs, puffings.

The sea is only a tremendous bucket swarming
with a few fish where currents are
mysterious maps under the most popular of orbits,
she keeps her gemstones there, near the edges
yet the divers want so much more,
want to see the habitats of the blind.

Limbo on this contiguous shore,
a great divide between salt and drink,
that mountain under this dome described
and traveled, such slight migrations to and fro.
The weakest birds who fall in April
are found in those sad positions
without ceremony or feather.
They do die trying don't they?
Smile. They die trying.


References for this poem one two three four obleo