Thomas R. Keith Poetry
Verse both sacred and secular.
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Four Rivers
Styx makes a great ouroboros And flows into itself: A ring the gods slip on Before their oath-making. On the left bank souls gather Like so many flies On the gashed flank of an antelope. Those without obols Harass those with them: Don’t you remember what I did for you Before night sealed our eyes?…
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The Sea People
Flecks of pepper on foam Were their ships To the distant watchtower. Children bawling, Goats bleating amidst Their own dung, Could not be heard Over the waves. As they came on In their fractal thousands, There were mutters Among the garrison: Sun-glint on bronze Might be shovels Or hidden swords. In their aimlessness Might lie…
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Centurion
You recant with the ease of swatting a fly. Under the harsh stares of your company, under the twin gazes of the golden eagle and Tiberius Caesar ‘s portrait bust, the whole affair becomes a dream. I never said it, and if I said it I never meant it. The gods are too busy feasting…
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Barn Owl
In Egypt they made you a hieroglyph – no wonder. For you are silent in flight as night pressing on the Nile; and when milky feathers part to show your clandestine mouth, the small shivering prey vanishes into you as quickly, as irrevocably, as a murdered pharaoh, hustled by his vizier to oblivion somewhere in…
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Sericulture
We are all silkworms of one kind or the other. Either we boil in our cocoons, leaving fine thread to be unwound from a lifeless soup – to be made into a stocking, or a scarf, or a dressing gown, worn with pride by one indifferent to the murders that birthed it – or we…
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Midnight Drive
The road is a sleeping cottonmouth With rain-wet scales. My headlights splatter Against a limestone escarpment – Menacing, indifferent. The road signs, armless scarecrows With motley faces, Nod hieratically as I pass. On the radio, a gin-soaked balladeer, Reminding anyone who’ll listen That love is a kick in the shins. He sings in time with…
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The Atomist Said
You think the world unique? I tell you, If every second you picked up a pebble – Every second, from now until your dotage – And placed it in a pile, You would not reach a tenth Of the number of worlds That congeal and rarefy in the void. You call the world comely? I…
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Nicodemus
Light-averse and lampless he slipped like a cave fish through Jerusalem – its countless streets and byways – seeking a rabbi he dared not call rabbi. Every sound, a threat. Every shadow, an informer. To be caught was death. No doubt he arrived breathless, trembling, but full of hope: now he would hear the secret…
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Persephone
upon emerging no doubt blinked once for every seed she had swallowed: both to cleanse the insidious murk, the wails and chitterings of the dead made solid, from her stinging eyes, and to assure herself that yes, this was her mother who wept, wrapping her tight in cloak-folds that rustled like grain; this was the…
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Cleaners of Yggdrasil
I hope the World-Tree (Like all respectable trees) Has woodpeckers. Neither a surfeit nor A lack: Just enough to Tint the vortex with Their scarlet crests. Just enough to Pluck grubs from cracks Between stars And bring them back To a mess of half- Starved chicks. Just enough that A faint tattoo In the middle…
Thomas R. Keith Poetry 