HOUR OF MONKS

The monks drink their silence wine.

No one watches them.

They could fall asleep facedown in a hill

And no one would know.

I would like some butter with my bread.

I will eat dark bread and think about the lone monk

Lying facedown on a green hill.

A fox approaches him.

The fox sniffs.

I look away as the fox does the other things it will do.

The monk lies silent as bread.

The monk is terrible and small.

Whatever the monk believed, we believe him.

No one believes the fox.

No one believes my dark bread and glass of milk.

My house this morning is a green hill

And my bread is black, the color of earth and speed.

My eye is black and the house is black as bread.

The monk lies sleeping in the dead.

His monk brothers drink wine in silence.

I am small.

I am actually a child.

The silence has made humps in my shoulders.

Whatever the earth is,

It is much better to eat dark bread

And think on what it was.

It is enough to make the brain dark.