A Winter in Exile

For John Shreffler

R.T. Castleberry

We are killing again.
Flame, bullet, broadcast encircle
the sweep of cemetery timber,
the laughter of Latin prayer.
As I study in the stale air,
the refrigerated cold of this hospice
I bring a separation,
a silence chalked on blank slate.
Beside my bed, my cigarettes
lay Crow, Ariel, The Devil’s Dictionary.
A King James International is bookmarked
with one lilac, one lily.
The Spanish novelist trembles as he packs.
“This is not my cause, my country,” he says.
“I have no wife, no creed,
no duties but the bullwhip
and a poor man’s riddle.”
“You run,” I tell him, “as if each battle,
each bride in birth is a requiem.
They are mathematical amusements.
They are the clatter of sculpted birds
blessed by imam, by rabbi.”

In spring, in summer
sunrise melds fire to sacrifice.
I close the waterfront windows
as sandstorms rise to shatter like bone shards.
Death is sighing somewhere else.
I have been educated in betrayal,
in the sheen of language as enchantment.
Dazed, doused in spiritless endeavour,
I bury my father’s whisper, his father’s bayonet
beside the tumbrel and the Amen Tree.
Raging, caged under house arrest
the Spanish novelist covers the dining table
with drafts of paragraphs for the Suspect’s Diary.
“Release without record,” he says, “is a looter’s con.
I’ve seen imagery, interpretation narrow
to laws of theology and coalition.
I’ve watched a spiral of seven crows
trace the contrail wisp of warplanes,
the shimmering sunset wake of gunboats.”
Like dead ambassadors of family, church, state
the Spaniard and I wander,
wasted in roles of conscience.
Bridges in flames beneath a fogbound moon,
the hoax of heat lightning
ease the autumn drill of departure.
A river reports its destruction to the sea.
Leaving is easy.