Autobiography of a Vulture

I hatched from the void.
Crawled into the glow
on my pinhooks, craving meat.
The first scrap unlocked my throat.
All of us in the nest
open and swaying for it—
little death flowers.

Days, the sun was extreme
and mothering.
And at night:
the moon’s head
arriving over the hills.

*

With time, talent came into my wings.
And my eyes grew deep
inside my hood.

Everywhere I looked
I saw a body’s helplessness, its need
to lie on the earth—

I followed my hungers
across the open fields . . .

*

I know I am reviled.
When you see me you think of violence,
of deprivation—

I find death where it is: simultaneous
with life.

Bit by bit, I transfigure it.
Shreds of skin, pliant organs
of the interior—
my rancid stomach
digesting it all
like a little stove.
Until what’s left is just
the bones, the silent ancestors
enduring in the grass.

*

I, Vulture, who am tenant of the partition—
clawed by wind, existing
in the golden needles of the grasses:
I stand with the dead.

At the field’s edge, with all
who have rotted and who will—

I stand griefless in my black overcoat.

Two Rabbits

I was carrying a rabbit.
Abruptly it became two rabbits—each one
half the size of the original.
They throbbed in my hands,
the offspring of some strange division.
Their fur was fresh and soft.

This had happened once before,
when my life first split
into comfort and pain. Now
with my coat flapping, I was carrying
the two rabbits across an autumn field.
In the distance: a lamplit house.

The days were getting increasingly smaller,
each day climbing out of the one
before, uncomprehending.

Photograph © Zeitfixierer