| A
Winter in Exile For John Shreffler R.T. Castleberry |
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are killing again. Flame, bullet, broadcast encircle the sweep of cemetery timber, the laughter of Latin prayer. As I study in the stale air, the refrigerated cold of this hospice I bring a separation, a silence chalked on blank slate. Beside my bed, my cigarettes lay Crow, Ariel, The Devil's Dictionary. A King James International is bookmarked with one lilac, one lily. The Spanish novelist trembles as he packs. "This is not my cause, my country," he says. "I have no wife, no creed, no duties but the bullwhip and a poor man's riddle." "You run," I tell him, "as if each battle, |
each
bride in birth is a requiem. They are mathematical amusements. They are the clatter of sculpted birds blessed by imam, by rabbi." In spring, in summer sunrise melds fire to sacrifice. I close the waterfront windows as sandstorms rise to shatter like bone shards. Death is sighing somewhere else. I have been educated in betrayal, in the sheen of language as enchantment. Dazed, doused in spiritless endeavour, I bury my father's whisper, his father's bayonet beside the tumbrel and the Amen Tree. Raging, caged under house arrest the Spanish novelist covers the dining table with drafts of paragraphs for the Suspect's Diary.  |
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