kingdom

Behind their flocking shadows you sink,

screaming for an endless dawn without its dusk.

You are ruler of the kingdom of skies,

and yet you sink without consent into the belly of the earth.

Why do they conceal you,

When they have no quarrel with their homeland?

Expansive and clear, passive to our curiosity.

And why was it commanded,

when it brings the shaking wonders of the earth to burial?

Defeated by this cruel union you shift into the seas,

whose temperamental lord grows tired of your visitation.

It is all you can do to seduce your apprentice,

that she may remind us you will return to rule once more.

As if our coffins’ supplicating walls

might deceive us you were never bright.