from “For the Lost Cathedral,” 11

← v9n2, Fall 2010

And then a conflagration spread across

the face of a holy land

which was the cradle of secrets,

entire desert minefields of secrets;

which took the multitudes

for the few, the few for the many;

The star-spit of the rifle and fuse,

the cavernous bunker thumped

and smoking, brimming with ink—take that.

Take the secret few the sun takes down

like rain, like rust, like a deposition.

Or the sacred ground that opens

its mouth and nothing comes.

Gather up the slow fuel of the multitudes

smeared in oil, entire desert

minefields of oil. Wash them,

name them, carry them off.

Bear them up through the story

you hand your children

like a gun, like all the world

dragged through the needle of heaven,

and see what you have left.

war religion violence

Bruce Bond

Bruce Bond is the author of three forthcoming books: Rise and Fall of the Lesser Sun Gods (Elixir Press), which won the 17th Annual Elixir Book Prize, Frankenstein’s Children (Lost Horse Press), and Dear Reader (Free Verse Editions). He is the author of eighteen published books including Sacrum (Four Way Books, 2017); Blackout Starlight: New and Selected Poems 1997–2015 (Louisiana State University, 2017), which won the L.E. Phillabaum Poetry Award; Black Anthem (University of Tampa Press, 2016), which won the Tampa Review Prize for Poetry; Gold Bee (Southern Illinois University Press, 2016), which won the Helen C. Smith and Crab Orchard Awards; and Immanent Distance: Poetry and the Metaphysics of the Near at Hand (University of Michigan Press, 2015). He is Regents Professor of English at University of North Texas.