AGONY CAN’T CRUSH AGONY’S ODDS

Agony can’t crush agony’s odds, nor life

dissolve its art of illusion. For a lifetime,

shellfish lurking between rocks are hidden music,

a grand orchestra playing from the clefts

as humans march toward a future. How light seeps

from the lowest places, the rankest odors

signs of troubled times. I perch on a trash heap

chanting the marriage of plastic

and fire. This will echo until one soul ascends

from the depths of earth.

Only then will fig trees bloom,

and shells reveal their looping paths,

as all of it repeats

to infinity. It’s like this,

he said, agony can’t crush agony’s odds.