Lost Civilization

Henry Hart

Wine festered（溃烂） at the bottom of my skull. 

            Wind blew the night's big ideas off the trees. 

 The moon had frostbite（冻伤，冻疮）. The stars did, too. 

Be kind to animals was mother's mantra（咒语）. 

            Do your duty was father's. 

 Their ghosts breathed on my rear-view mirror. 

I parked by a locked bank. 

            An SPCA volunteer guided me across ice 

 to a llama（美洲驼） starved by a bankrupt farmer. 

Dogs lined up behind the topless Cadillac 

            of the Christmas queen, polar bears 

 crooning（低吟） Elvis hits on a plywood iceberg. 

A police car uncoiled red razor wire 

            from a siren. Shriners 

 traced signs for infinity in dwarf Corvettes. 

I shivered among Cub Scouts 

            staggering into wind like Arctic explorers, 

 lips blue as their uniforms. 

We marched beneath a pink cloud on a spacewalk 

            past Main Street's plastic Santas 

 to a big tent by Saint Francis Church. 

Warming my hands around cups 

            of mulled cider, I listened to Youths 

 for Christ argue about beasts in the Apocalypse. 

After the first snow, the floats huddled 

            in the parking lot 

 like a city buried beneath desert sand.