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from the beginning,
was meant to douse the darkness
as it did then in that year;
to sparkle the snowflake
that caught the fringe
of a child's eyelash in the Urals of winter
as it backlit
the blue in his mother's tears;
meant to splash
into the bucket of reindeer milk
as it splashed on the shoulders of peasants
toiling in the fields of revolution
that they, themselves, had plowed;
to creep without reservation
into the blacksmith's shop in Bukhara,
past old city walls;
meant to warm
the bread at supper, the bowl
of sunflower seeds; the sleeping children
in their utopia, snug in blankets
loomed with parrot and peacock feathers
and red squares. But this
had been a dream of light,
and by its creation,
meant to reveal what had been done
in darkness behind the barbed wire,
sharpened by secrets;
the brine pits where men were beaten
into their labor, ankle-deep in mire;
their hands stung by salt water
and the pull of cabbages;
meant to glisten
the sweat on their backs,
and in the beards of Old Believers
wishing to go back before the slaughter,
the forced starvation, the mass graves;
before the light
was meant to pour down the throat
of the iris, choking on its stalk;
before it poured across the canvas
on which Goya painted Saturn
Devouring His Children.
Joanne Monte
Read poems about / on: children, city, winter, child, light, mother, red, water, dream, shopping, sleep
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