Reading Late Anabasis
by Ishion Hutchinson
published in Connotation Press
There is nothing strictly immortal, but immortality.
—Thomas Browne, Urn Burial
You read the ripples of their sandals
and armors dragged in dust, the anagram
of crows following them, the air
sick-riveted pitched down in night’s
large territory near a highway trucks rumble
like tankers to war, or breath moving
upon water, condensing time—night
being the sun’s drop into ashes.
You look up and see barbarians gathering,
you hear their organs and the stars
when they shouted: sea! sea! at the dark
coastline, regiment after regiment, entered.
So you pull the cord on the light, to wade
the sepia sheets, forever on the road, forever
the bonfire raging in the skull and bones.
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