It's always two minutes to midnight,
and we're always in the Garden of Gethsemane.
I don't remember when
moonlight started to burn like this, but
it seems like this is all there is, maybe all
there ever was, ever will be.
The brain has never felt more like
spoiling meat, nor the excoriated soul itself
more reassuringly transient,
as we dance these slow, sad waltzes
with mute, irradiated ghosts
beneath the branches of the doveless olive trees.
The night is sharp with splinters and iodine
and other traumas. Muffled voices, raised
in song: listen! they are singing inside
the fallout shelters. Ash drifts like
apple blossom. Wolf skeletons relearn the
ability to howl. Everything we fear
is inevitable. Much of it has
already happened. And maybe tomorrow
won't bring betrayal, crucifixion or torture, just
something else,
something like agony,
I guess.