A rainy country

The headlines and feature stories alike

leak blood all over the breakfast table,

the wounding of the world mingling with smells of bacon and bread.

Small pains are merely anterooms for larger,

and every shadow has a brother, just waiting.

Even grace is sullied by ancient angers.

I must remember it has always been like this:

those Trojan women, learning their fates;

the simple sharpness of the guillotine.

A filigree of cruelty adorns every culture.

I've thumbed through the pages of my life,

longing for childhood whose failures

were merely personal, for all

the stations of love I passed through.

Shadows and shadow of shadows.

I am like the queen of a rainy country,

powerless and grown old. Another morning

with its quaint obligations: newspaper, bacon grease, rattle of dishes and bones.