Reports from the cities are grim.
The corpses pile up
In refrigerated warehouses.
Long trenches are dug
On Hart Island
To bury the unclaimed dead.
The living are cloistered and fearful
The center will not hold.
Lacking lambs' blood,
Cats' blood is smeared on the doors.
What dark angel
Slouches down empty streets ?
Yet over it all,
Except where the burnings
Ashen the air,
The sky is brilliant and lovely.
Small wonder
We taught ourselves to fly.
And tonight Orion will be back
From that other hemisphere
Tilting
Perpetually amazed
His dog's reduced to a star.
—Closing stanza from Marianne Boruch"s Genuine Fakes
