Aaron Graham Poems

Love and War

Abiit Iam et Reverti Debet
(He has been gone for long and must once return)
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The Beauty of the Woman


The beauty of the woman is behind her touch
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And I too have stood in the grove, listening:
More an antique Roman than image of a man.
Straining, hearing only the wind: driving dust,

to Hecuba.
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1) Butt-stock high in shoulder
I) Break the hand-guard
2) Good chipmunk cheek
II) Pull the handle back
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Time is abstract, time is linear, has no form, no fixed construct.
Time refuses to lengthen for man. Within man
Between there is space to unfold time’s spirals.
Elongate seconds’ spiroid cartography to fill the void
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Adaptation, survival, ROE, COC: abstractions;
Mean nothing.
Mean what your perception finds In them.
So, mean nothing.
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The dead ones, actually death too: couldn’t interest me less
Tell the truth, I hate’em. Hate they’re still here
Stillness is chaos. This chaos was never even motion’s beauty.
Ungainly, they lay about
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The Olive Branch grew without winter’s wisdom

Though Plow-shear fingers strokd’ dead-earth: bulging.
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Saint Edmund was for England.

Saint Dennis was for France.
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The Damn Birds,

I heard them again this morning
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