from the stones

DAVID McLEAN

from the stones runs water rehearsing winter,

and running slower till it gets to be temporary

stone, an arrogant eternity of ice

to freeze fingers to the pump

 

and leave skin as tribute to the imps of water

and the sanctity of matter, water and blood

for them, the little devils of chance

and facticity. they are not sentient, not mystic,

 

here where they only live in poems about an adverse

world turning, and people becoming things

they never meant to be, like dead or happy

and nothing forever until the night breaks,

 

and we lie eternity motionless in the grave,

dead and wide awake