from Robert Glück's Reader

Pasolini




I

2 crows walk down the road.
One says, “Brother, when the state
is truly communist & out of
the jeweled grasp of church & capital
where even the weeds are looking for a better cemetery,
brother, then we will see–”
Every haystack trembles for the body.
These birds talk good sense. Later they are eaten &
their bones deliciously picked clean.




2

2 crows: politics: to believe and believe.
They experiment, one lies & the other believes,
obvious lies & obvious faith.
What’s left stands on one scaly foot,
its head under its wing
and a wink of complicity from the state.




3

2 crows, 2 crows walk down a road
that was shattered by economics.
One crow says “Brother,
I don’t know how to make a living.
When I wake up in the morning
tears already stand in my eyes
ready to flow. Brother,
to live in the world,
to change the world.”



4

2 crows walk & talk on the desolate
theme of early death.
“Yet lest we may be too one-sided, brother,
notice with what beauty & justice
the sun rises, colors
reflect off their objects, muscles flex,
breath is accepted & enjoyed.”
 
Reader was published by The Lapis Press in 1989