HARVEST

Whose crop of ordered stone,
Row and row and row
Over land's distant sweep;
Whose husbandry of stubborn rock?

What keeper with calloused palms
Tends the grounds of Armageddon;
What remnant host will reap
Quarried slabs in grassy field?'

For what holy hour grows
This garden of Apocalypse
Where sundial shafts scythe time
Until shadow-hands cease?:

A sack-cloth Sun sits shiva.
Negev rivers blaze with pitch.
Sky bathes the milk-moon in blood,
Hails stars of crystal ice.

Shaking dust from roots of bone,
Smiling dead wake in their beds
To plow again with Savior's sword,
Bury day in the tilth of night.

All earth-bound souls sown,
Watered with tears of dew.
The garden grows for us alone;
The only time is soon.

RACE

Once more around the dusty tracks,
The horsemen of war, well equipped.
Jockeys of the Apocalypse
Hitch ordnance of holocausts.

The sky's window scrolls shut,
Final bets booked in blood.
Trumpets with tongues of sword
Herald chase in owls' court.

White, red, black, and pale,
Avenging steeds with bits in teeth
Thrust wide the gates of Hell
Unbolt the thunder from their necks.

The gallop-quake rouses dead,
Shakes even bones of atheist.
From the grave they root the race,
The course of fate upon their heads.

Corpses' coins collect in sockets
Shiny eclipses of sight's darkness
Wagered long on beating death,
Kingdom Come down the homestretch.

At the finish line the clocks stop,
The kick of hoofs, frozen quick.
Tickets littered, all bets off,
Time unwound by heart's ticktock.

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