Daddy had come back to hear
All you had against him. He
Could not believe it. Where
Did you get those words if not
In the tails of his bees? For others
The honey. For him, Cupid’s bow
Modified in Peenemünde
Via Brueghel. Helpless
As weightless, voiceless as lifeless,
He had to hear it all
Driven into him up to the feathers,
Had to stand the stake
Not through his heart, but upright
In the town square, him tied to it
Stark naked full of those arrows
In the bronze of immortal poesy.
So your cry of deliverance
Materialized in his
Sacrificed silence. Every arrow
Nailing him there a star
In your constellation. The giant
Chunk of jagged weapon –
His whole distorted statue
Like a shard of shrapnel
Eased out of your old wound. Rejected
By your body. Daddy
No longer to be borne. Your words
Like phagocytes, ridding you with a roar
Of the heavy pain.
From the monumental
Immortal form
Of your injury: your Daddy’s
Body full of your arrows. Though it was
Your blood that dried on him.