Mark Levine
LARK
Storm of storms: We slept through it
In a golden stupor. True, it
Did its damage before it withdrew. It
Emptied our orchard of unharvested fruit
Along with a fruit-picking crew it
Hurled hither and yon, bushels askew; it
Did not apologize, either, though a few it-
Ty bitty groans slipped through it-
S pores, a sorrowful fugue. It
Remained, elsewise, mute.
Indifferent to logic or pleas—betraying no clue it
Had sunk in us a dream of harsh rescue—it
Washed the sky in a cascading blue it
Called “Midnight Curfew.” It
Fell to us, wee ones, to prosecute
Our case against it; to pursue it-
S condemnation, issue it
Formal summonses, eschew it
Publicly but proportionately and put the screws to it
Before its germ spread beyond the few it
Counted as footmen: That fleet fellow Pruitt,
Tongue-snarler; his hirsute It-
Alo-Romanian strongboy, Radu, it-
Emizer of dark expenses; and the pet Jew, It-
Zhak, with whom it spun a dashing minuet.
Had we grown a touch too it
-Chy with grievance? We stepped back to review it
And ourselves through it
S scuzzy screen—astute brute,
Trouncer of the food/sex/feces/corpse-defiling taboo it
Drew it
S power from—and ask what restitut-
Ion was due it.
Did we crave to lure it to remnant woods, queue it
Up and spill goo into it?
Yes; but we lacked the wherewithal to go through w/ it.
It languished in a cage of bamboo it
Mocked as a mighty tower; too, it
Resisted all efforts to woo it
With savory treats, choosing to chew it-
S moony fingernails down to the root,
Awaiting its debut. It
Gave commands and bade us hop to it,
Grubbing holy text only to strew it
-S pages like fumes up the flue it
Snapped shut on us. Ours was a fluid
Situation, no will to praise or to rue it,
Clarify or misconstrue it
S motives. Time was—as we once knew it—
An enemy came and our soldier slew it
Without hesitation in absolute
Righteous rage. This was a new it
Eration. What matter why or how or who it
Was had fallen among us?—or if it was me or you it
Aimed to undo? It
Advised us to get used to it
S’presence, whistling a plucky off-tune Alouette
In our sleepless faces and dousing us with dew it
Mustered night and day like suet.
What next, old coot?
There was more than nothing to it.
MARK LEVINE has published four books of poems, most recently Travels of Marco (2016) and the 25th-anniversary edition of Debt (2018). His new book, Sound Fury, will appear in the fall of 2022.
