God of Nothingness by Mark Wunderlich

Author:Mark Wunderlich [Wunderlich, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Poetry
ISBN: 9781644450420
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Published: 2021-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

FRAGMENT OF ST. JULIAN

after Piero della Francesca

The throat of the stag was never meant for speaking.

It would have pained the creature to make the shapes,

to force the tongue and push against its single row of teeth,

make way for the warning to Julian, whose arrow

broke the bleeding hole the spirit of speech went in.

The first the beast spoke was warning, threat, and pain,

which is the way of all first language, the mouth

opening in surprise, the lungs seizing up to bark.

In the fragment of wall skimmed off and framed,

Julian too looks pained, regret not yet registered,

understanding leaking like a tint stirred into plaster

his cloak still pulled around his shoulders, his club

gripped in his good hand, having beaten to death

the bodies of those who made him. Regret would come later,

but for now he was more animal than that talking beast

who knew him for what he was.

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