And the rains were over for the moment,
heavy rains only lightly tinged with random
radioactive particles, still buzzing
around the atmosphere from ’45 and then the ’50s
and ’60s when everyone joined in. I love
the clarity of light in the fall out
under the open wheel of sky turning bluer
unto itself until it almost turns black. And shoveling,
composting, made me think how G. Snyder’s
“Four Changes” contains enough answers
to end all the current nonsense: fossil fuel-based
transportation, an economy that insists
on cancerous growth, bread ever more of
stale rags, tongues for wealth and power
at all costs, even war. The new manure
is hottest, and it’s best to mix it with
the scoops of sand and older, broken-down
material. And I thought of how few
of the “Four Changes” I really live.

I’m like a grub worm in the dirt, essential
to the process but unable to change it much.
My role seems set—consume, fatten,
shit, die. And the outcome of such
blindness makes me think of the other
September 11^th, the one in 1973
when Pinochet’s troops took over Santiago
and marched all the socialists and communists
to the Estadio Nacional with US-financed
guns at their backs. I think it must’ve been
hard to hear the echoes of soccer fans’ cheers
amid the howls of men and women with broken
hands, arms, legs, and no confessions to give,
nothing to confess. And I doubt the CIA
had to give a lesson on the breaking of bones,
natural to the human race, almost like love.

After all, even composting is a violent
cycle, with the maggots writhing in a discarded
orange like someone’s brain on fire.
And I wonder if our monuments of education,
entertainment and infrastructure will be
used for torture someday when the country
falls, as all great countries do. Sometimes,
I can almost see the bodies of our “innocent civilians”
chained to water pipes in malls, to railings
in stadiums. Maybe some haunting Chinese
or Arabic song, or Sousa march, will echo
off the concrete as the strong arm or blow torch
or kitchen knife comes closer. “I didn’t do
anything!” the civilian may scream. That’s
the point—what we are not doing now
will hang us later.