When an airplane
flies cityward lamp to lamp
blackened holes in steel
to the man-smidgen below,
the squall and the crumbling street
shimmer through viscid sheets,
when the weeds crack through asphalt
metaphysical as turnip seeds in
daytime showing the diastoled
iris’ split view,
the man and the woman he hates
stand against each other
stuck together as in a mirror of puberty
or a filling station jammed
tight against a hillside.
The slow murder instead of war
is no less bestial, Wilfred Owen,
no more dignifies a meadow
nor is the sky a less dangerous
carrier of fatal pollen now
peace cramps the spine and
appears too bright to us.