Future
by Evan Harrison
after Robert Lowell’s “History”
Future has to die with what is here,
dropping the spade and staring at the sky—
it was so devoted and doggish how we lived,
like moths in fire, life will burn in a hiss.
Cain lived and wore his mark like armor.
Can’t a blood-sucking field shake the believer,
his cows ruminating before slaughter,
his boys fighting over a branch shaped like a rifle.
As in every beginning, glaring, motherly,
the murderous sun rises from one sky to another—
a man could hide his face: two hands cupped over
my eyes, shut so tightly into wrinkled beds—
there’s flooding guilt in my face
pulled by the weight of sleep and lit with fear.
