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Go Home From “Works of Mercy”

BOOKS AND ARTS APRIL 11, 2005

From “Works of Mercy”

I am a man now, too, not unlike my father
who ran about town recklessly unfolding

before people then came home
to us who waited for him. He came home
to us, that throttling man: the one who bounced
with me in the ocean then kissed the salt wet

in my hair, who held our mother down in anger
or in love above her all-the-while drifting call John,

John
, who slung a stag's carcass across his shoulders
and strode out of a forest into a clearing where light

shone intermittently. This is what men do.
They touch and spread desire. They chime

with the violence of desire not during the feast
but later once the body has had time to cool.

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