and how sad it is that we have all come to / become war ourselves / clear as the well-spring tuff of light brewing in the / dark edge of things / every day for the rest of his life / father’s shame grew and with it the crows that / gathered to eat them / how we descended a gallery of stairs just to get / in touch with that which ate his psyche from within / just to keep carved the half ecstasy / knitted brows / lamp-lit gap-toothed smile / mown voice / nobody chameleons for every hue quite like a mother / or takes their grief on a walk quite like her / pray the elegy in her heart / quiver its arrows at the parakeets / respited in her head / soon nobody will know of this / they will say she stayed / unmoving and living / vicariously through the war / who will / x-ray that part / yes the part about her / zigzaging her way home to her children