A Drone Scans the Wreckage
Smoke gets in my eyes,
My fifteen eyes.
Glass insulation smolders.
Pink tongues get stuck on it.
Charred cotton candy.
Did I do that?
Palm tree shorn of its head.
Cathedral ceilings, opened up
To the stars, to the stark.
What did they worship in there?
The overhead fans?
The bolsters? The naked bedspread?
I spy.
They cried O God to the pillows.
Now ripped and fluttering,
Angel feathers.
These hover, slower than me.
See raw finger paint. Red.
Wet still crawling.
Must have missed something.
Better home in again.
Do some stuttering.
Attapat. Attatat. Attastasis. Attaboom.
Accurate this time. Rah.
Anything saved equals failure.
Was I bad?
Teardrops fall and fall.
The rain shower’s broken.
The New Yorker
August 13 & 20, 2012
Thanks for posting the poem. I read it in The New Yorker the other day and it made my eyes wet. May Margaret Atwood live a long and fruitful life! We need more writers like her. I've always been a fan of her writing.
ReplyDeleteGreetings from London.
Thanks. I'm an Atwood fan also.
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