Blown Dust

BLOWN DUST

The place is
Like meat the flies
Have blown

Ridden by maggots of
Wind-wrinkling moving dust
Hard blown as chill fog

Of mourning that isn't
As it might be found
In a greener land's morning.

Meat is plagued off the bones
By pestiferous smallfired shot; as this earth flies
In marginal inclemencies of air.

All loose things scatter in dust
To the wind's hideouts, and this mob,
Like people too-used to suffering's motes

In their eyes, move through all this
As if the plastic bags hooked on trees are
Not, as if a white-goods and car-wreck cemetery

Stills them in the eternally-moving throw-away
Rubbish like it was not there, as if it was
Just skins off an eaten meal, as if it

Is a tucker that sustains them, as if it
Was shells of the nuts that fulfill them;
The fire-ash that keeps them here.