De Clementia: Prayer of the Last Prizefighter
Let rain soften stone. Small god of the sea
glass, imp of riverbanks and everyweather,
give back to the sand this knuckle-shrapnel
and the hand that rattles like a snake’s tail
and the hand that rattles like a snake’s tail
with its loose shards of bone. Let the star
whose dead light leans against me be my last
whose dead light leans against me be my last
enemy: may my opposition be
as phantom as the shaft of its cold beam,
as phantom as the shaft of its cold beam,
collapsible as ash is to the touch.
