The Stone Determinant
We sit through bulletproof rain
under an old extension of metal eaves,
wood brown passengers wrapped
in hair smocks and robes, waiting
for the train that will never come.
An old man mumbles about the Banana Wars,
of letting the rampant French prevail.
He tells me how he trudged sixty miles
through shit and wet winter ice
just to hear the sound of England.
I help him struggle with the waste water,
tend his skillet with bottles and red sticks.
He squeezes raisins into the shape
of magnificent brigades, dropping
them into a bucket of saltpeter.
Together we bite the sun as it rises
over the Earth's exhausted seas,
the morning's white towers raised
by the forkful in sullen arcs,
our teeth crumbling to dust in our mouths.
by Michael Puttonen