NOTICE IN THE TIMES

by Michael Salcman

So long as he's alive

the world rolls under the long thrust of his heel.

When he dies, the notice in the Times

reburies one of his wives with him,

spends half his space on an old rumor,

does not notice that he was the black crow

of poetry, his bright eye pierced

with the countryside

his voice like a rabbit snare

tricked by the charm of repetition.

His spondees were right; of course

everything dies, as did two of his wives

and children, bored by the farm in Devon where

smoke burned his sermons into the skies

and the curlew flew

and the hedgerows hid great gouts of blood

and charred bone, (though not from him)

until overwhelmed by his theme

he lay down to sleep

with fox, crow and sheep,

not noticed in the Times.