At Last in the Garden

In the orchards, the figs fall rotten, split and oozing blackened seeds and, black, the pulping flesh; weevils in the bread, the wine gone sour, and ravens feeding well on stinking death. Still the sun-mad surge, blood rampage, crazed for glory-after, as covetous as kings of flat rewards that shimmer like false water. Denned in red stone crumbling to sand, their howls wind across the burning land. In this place of sighs and stings we wander, find scorpion comfort in bruised jasmine star, nightingale fallen silent in the pleasure garden, the crescent rising, dully gleaming, gone.