Rain scanty, fodder scarce. Or the children’s feet
are muddy. There’s no bread. A sheep ate the heart
of Thomas Hardy, so that another sheep’s heart
had to do in the terrible pinch and be laid to rest
next to the novelist’s wife. Have you ever seen
a sock stiffening with real blood, as if it had
a sweet red voice like the hard-to-speak-to toys
we had a heart-to-heart with when we were ten?
Some persons are picking through the rubble.
Someone’s found a colander and is sifting
for his other shoe, some coins, his daughter, her bear,
the bear’s undazzled eye—
which he finds and sews on his coat
and only then can the bear see the man for what he is,
an animal that needs to be talked to.
At this time a black balloon rises over the municipal
ruins, and no one knows what it means.