With houses hung that slanted and remote
the road that goes there if you found it
would be dangerous and dirt. Dust would cake
the ox you drive by and you couldn’t meet
the peasant stare that drills you black. Birds
might be at home but rain would feel rejected
in the rapid drain and wind would bank off
fast without a friend to stars. Inside
the convent they must really mean those prayers.
You never find the road. You pass the cemetery,
military, British, World War Two and huge.
Maybe your car will die and the garage
you go to will be out of parts. The hotel
you have to stay in may have postcard shots,
deep focus stuff, of graves close up
and far off, just as clear, the bright town
that is someone’s grave. Towns are bad things happening,
a spear elected mayor, a whip ordained.
You know in that town there’s a beautiful girl
you’d rescue if your horse could run.
When your car is fixed you head on north
sticking with the highway, telling yourself
if you’d gone it would have been no fun.
Mountain towns are lovely, hung way away
like that, throbbing in light. But stay in one
two hours. You pat your car and say
let’s go, friend. You drive off never hearing
the bruised girl in the convent screaming
take me with you. I am not a nun.