I am an ugly child, doomed to kill

the ancestors' possessions with a shadowed blast

that my towns all make clear. I shut my door,

I close my life, I close my home, I close my ear.

I live a day in this desert. A whole night.

And then in the warm night where the ship, the air,

rocks through our country's music, I have gone

out to another forest, where the tombs—

the chalk face on the hills, the bodies in the sand

I've never seen—run still, and fill my blood,

and too close languages stare in my face.

From Spells