The Brief Journey West

By the dry road the fathers cough and spit,

This is their room. They are the ones who hung

That bloody sun upon the southern wall

And crushed the armored beetle to the floor.

The father’s skin is seamed and dry, the map

Of that wild region where they drained the swamp

And set provision out that they might sit,

Of history the cracked precipitate,

Until the glass be shattered and the sun

Descend to burn the prosperous flesh away

Of the filthy world, so vilely fathered on

The fathers, such black cinders, sitting there.

Old pioneers, what lecheries remain?

When schoolgirls pass, what whispers of their skirts,

Cold gleams of flesh, solicit in your veined

And gemlike eyes the custom of desire?

None now. Their eyes are sunk in ancient flesh,

And the sarcastic triumph of the mind

They now enjoy, letting their lust alone

Who may have kin but have no longer kind.

Neither tomorrow’s monstrous tumor nor

The reformation of the past they wish,

Who hold in silent colloquy the world

A shrivelled apple in the hand of God.

They hang at night their somber flags aloft,

And through the amorous dark pursue their theme

Of common images, that sleep may show

Them done with all disasters but the one.

Howard Nemerov was born on February 29th, 1920 in New York. He died of cancer at his home in University City, Missouri on July 5th 1991.