Parable of desire

Leslie Harrison

& in the end we have nothing are nothing

& the husks of the bees litter the ground beneath the hive

& the keeper sweeps the dead into stinging piles

& quietly weeps for the silence

& the unmolested flowers

& their profligate useless beauty

& all around him like a dirge

& pollen sticky in the throat sticky in the lungs

& a dead bee weighs less than a feather

& nobody dances for the queen

& their abandoned architectures

& the end of desire

& after disaster we can only travel so far

& the heart of the wasteland recovers last

& sometimes the distance is too great

& the sakura petals fall

& pool in puddles like doom

 

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