The Dead Write No Poems

Or if they do, only in the language
of crows. All night they gather
in hills where nightshade grows.
I have watched them hefting brown
bottles, shadowy hands full of turf.
They never sleep, and their eyes
can only well with tears and blood.
I have seen their empty pails
fill with nothing you can touch.
When trees grow thin, wailing slender
roots through valleys of blue-veined
stone, the dead carve sonnets, hurl
their verse like comets, tiny pills
blazing in vast blue cylinders of loam.

Steve Klepetar

If you've any comments on this poem, Steve Klepetar would be pleased to hear from you.