56PATERNITY TEST

Here is how it is:

if I cannot kill you

I will kill myself.

As I cannot kill you

I will kill myself.

I do not know

which is worse:

that you got his child

or that you killed it.

That you had our children

or that now I can never

be sure they are mine.

I want to rip his engine out

axe his trees

unhouse him

as I am unhoused

without means of escape.

Even his horses —

I would slash

their windpipes

and listen to the life

gurgle out of them

57into the thirsty sump

of earth — and I would watch

until the last drop, not use

my shotgun.

I would spare them

nothing.

Instead all of this

will happen to me.

You are the cause

but I will make it

happen to me.

Let me count the ways:

inertia

excess

oblivion

wakefulness

repetition

compulsion

avoidance

attention

mirrors

ovens

ashes

insomnia

oblivion

abrasion

from bloody

through to bone

58then a hammer

to finish the job

beyond repair

beyond hope.

What’s worse:

that they are not mine

or that I love them?

That I love them. Not

their fault but now

and forever

something is broken

between me and

my children.

Something no tool

in any workshop

of this world can mend.

Like a bird shut

in a room sees the outside air

and beats itself against

the invisible prison

to get there

until, a mess of blood

and feathers, it drops

and will not fly again.

My children.

It should not matter

and yet it does.

59No less lovable

yet it does.

This is what is

unforgivable

in both of us.

This is the stone in the road

that breaks the axle

so we have to abandon

our lives’ load

and walk away with what

we can carry.

How could their blood love me,

how care for me

when I am old?

I will never be older, anyway,

than today.

It should not matter

yet it does.

I can die

of this, or

I can choose metal

leave a mark

so deep that even strangers

will remember

what one man did

what drove him to it.

Make the end instead

of giving in

to it.

60

And still I wake to your smell

under morning sheets.

The t-shirt that released the scent

of you when you pulled it

over your head.

Your smell that included me

belonged to me, proof you were

the only one for me.

Proof.

Now I have it

and can’t wish it away

with the river.

It is stuck on the bank

like a dead sheep the flood has delivered

belly swelling

spoiled and spoiling

everything. Heat

and flies and mud

something even the magpies

will not touch.

I wish I could dump it

on his front lawn

and get away clean

but this is a stench

that will not wash off.

If you get it on your clothes

you have to burn them.

If you get it in your hair

61you have to cut it off.

If it gets under your skin

only a boning-knife will do the job.

Not your death

or injury

but the ash smeared

on your face.

That would be enough.

Troy burned

Paris dead

and Helen weeping.

An end fitting neat

as the blade returning

to the sheath

as a hawk returning

to the glove

as a plume of smoke

inscribes the vacancy

of heaven.

Then a long

poisoned silence

broken finally

by the distant baying

of dogs

and far away the shepherd hears it

and knows the wolf has visited

his flock.