← v20n2, Fall 2021
Poetry · Volume 20, Number 2

Pasolini

If a poem is a rainbow,

only a few degrees

are translatable. The sun must endure.

There’s darkness before, there’s darkness

after. The dog hears only

a certain sound. We don’t talk about

the oaks, they hear with their eyes. But

there are no eyes. No trees. There was

a stream in the moss. When the corpse

burned, my jaw

twitched. I imagined

frayed ropes rushing

through a pulley in Damascus. A basket

full of dates and figs, and soapwort.