To a Foetus Brother Long Dead

The grass above you will never green.
To blame they always have some convenient culprits:
For one, the goats, piteously hungry--
The non-symmetry of spaces
They keep expanding,
Creating stubs and stumps: No stubble for burning.
The other the neighbor’s ancient swine—they keep
Moving the stones, dumping on you its stinking shit,
Its acid urine flooding you,
Creating pools: the quiet habitat
Of unquarantined flies that converge on tables and tombs.
I wonder if the grass that covers you
Will stop browning.
I wonder if it will grow at all.

Foetus-brother, there’s something inside me that’s been
Missing you, like I miss the green grass.
We left you alone, a shadow in our
Primordial memories. We left you
Like we thought you could stick it out alone,
Like you could fight your own battles in the world
Of the dead, and win.

Unnamed brother, the grass
In my world will always be brown;
My desert will keep expanding its boundaries
From time to time;
My stones will move; and soon too
This sighing will have an end--
In the etiolating union of brown and green
In the eternal beyond.

July 10, 1998, 2:23 a.m.
Rev. August 25, 2007, 1:56 p.m.