Child Made of Sand by Thomas Lux

Author:Thomas Lux
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

WHY

It is an execrable and damnable monosyllable,

why; it exasperates God, ruins us.

—John Donne, Sermon CXXX

Why so much bread rotting on shelves and the mice so fat they roll

to their holes

at night, their legs too short

to pass their bellies to the floor, whyzat?

What starts up the diphtherial winds, melanoma sunsets?

I was also wondering (So he stood in his shoes /

And he wonder’d. / He stood in his shoes / And he wonder’d.) why

the years come to resemble a greasy deck of cards,

why afternoons bleed,

why does my friend die

before I’ve met her in the flesh

which she ordered turned to ash

the minute she was dead?

Now that I’m asking: Why the incapables, thirsty

at the lip only, why

the incapables commanding the capables,

and howzit the broken, melon-kneed horse

is made to kneel

before the bullet to his brain?

I’m full of whys!

Why is there no limit to recrudescence?

Why did that man jump so high

he forgot to come down, why, in a place with no more air,

it still looks as if air remains,

why-o, why-o, why?

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