If The War Goes Very Well

Something more powerful than the will,
    the heart anarchic did not cease firing.

It has not finished sewing itself together.
    What settles in the fine mesh:

Longing. We are tame and used to loss.
    The future puts its hands into our eyes

to fall into the human. Fast, we grow,
    faster than bamboo grows, than a frog bleeds.

The limit of what we had follows us
    to the ocean bottom: a fish shadow

pressing the cabin door.
    The human eye sees forty shades of grey.

This clinging to person and place
    only to move on and under,

is it so with mammals and fish?
    Contact sweeps across us every three seconds.

Sighted seaplane through periscope.
    Sighted two seaplanes through periscope.

Surfaced. Sighted two planes, submerged.
    Sighted the end, submerged.

Out there a great dark thing
    will take none of the names we give it.

Book of Spells text
Desirée Alvarez
CORK 2005