INTRODUCTION TO THE HARROWING OF HALYCHYNA

INTRODUCTION TO THE HARROWING OF HALYCHYNA

The giant dirt fields.
Under the ruined cupola’s September shadow,
At the lee of the lingering autocracy’s blade yields
To historical, neck-slung grindstone inertia the furrow,
Slow, of the eroding collective,
A sweat-sweet plead to the sky, impassive.

Such rank mouths
Under the foiled Union of a half-continent of timber.
With so few prepositions as to confound sympathetic behemoths
And the behemoths’ jingoistic younger
Set come the ignorant assertions, the prideful
Foot stamps in the dirt, so uncivil.

Near-absent means
Lie drunk, blind really, in the dirt: our red-eyed uncle.
The empty cooperative crumbles, like broken beans,
Together jigsaw a cheek-denting pillow of rubble,
And as our uncle snores at the sun and farts
And sleeps away from the present in fits and starts

His dream column
Rolls forth: rumbling German planter-spreaders.
From under each a dozen axles shriek the solemn
Terms of the inky lease that permits such gleaming invaders
Their tires-full-of-water and systematic
Turning over of our village-state’s bucolic
dirt.