Four Pieces of Unknown Origin

by Peter Riley

***

At last the singing stops
and the boat on the river,
two lanterns alive, drifts
to the town and the orphanage
where a baby is offered, if you want it, take it.

***

There comes an end to fucking
and an end to the fucking century
and cows lean their heads on the stone walls,
grass grows beside the weir, an end
to dying. We see it coming and don’t know
what to do as the divide deepens
and the gangs form.

***

“In white and its limestone were interred
all mourning and the memory of tragedy.”

There is some wine left, and soft snow,
the red and the white, the lived picture.

“. . . creating within these very walls the possibility
of new energy, health, work, truth.”

Under winter’s shadow the ground holds.
Stay where you will be.

[quotations from Manlio Brusatin, A History of Colors
translated by Hopcke and Schwartx, 1991]

Look at them lying there dead, helpless,
soft cushions for limbs that can no longer feel,
quartz crystals staring out of skulls’ eye sockets
our songs halt at holes where once ears were.
You can tell them anything, they’ll believe it.
Tell them a red flower sprang up, dropping
intellectual tears, pale blue, to the thoughtless pavement.