Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, STATION (1), by JAMES GALVIN


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

STATION (1), by                 Poet's Biography
First Line: I envy the soldiers' sleep -- ah, the sleep of a soldier
Last Line: No, no one
Subject(s): Jesus Christ; Sleep; Soldiers


I envy the soldiers' sleep -- ah, the sleep of a soldier.

Jesus was laid in the tomb and rocked in.
The good luck of the soldier sleeping through
what he was never meant to see.
The day before, when Jesus "died on the cross," was the day he harrowed heaven.
No one was there.
It was just a big desert like the Great Basin
where the rain that falls finds no river, where the rain has nowhere to go but
back.
Jesus plowed the sand behind his best donkey,
but even in sand the plow would not scour.
His harrow raised apparitions of dust: a wedding dress, a suit of
Spanish armor, a cassock, a twisted sword, Judas warming his hands by a dusty
fire.
But really, there was no one.
No, no one.


Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA
98368-0271, www.cc.press.org




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