The Ostriches: Part II

THE OSTRICHES: PART II

But he though blind of sight,
Despis’d and thought extinguish’t quite,
With inward eyes illuminated
His fierie vertue rouz’d
From under ashes into sudden flame,
And as an ev’ning Dragon came,
Assailant on the perched roosts …
And though her body die, her fame survives,
A secular bird ages of lives.

—Samson Agonistes

Captain Kirk: crisscross applesauce,
a buddha in disputation with his rivals
and a geyser of stigma erupts from the neck
like an arrow shooting out of Saint Sebastian.
O U.S.A.! O Jesus Christ again: that lucky denarius
constantly lost and found and accepted
and redeeming clay into stone, safe, relieved
and impermeable, like the Swiss Army knife
I would always lose and after fervent prayers
and promises and covenants, find again,
for it had everything: a saw, an awl, and all
things necessary to thrive bewildered in a lush
and spartan wilderness after the world
collapses from exhaustion. O to find
and be found after such foundering and loss!
Losing fathers, friends, fatherlands, whole families
of losers lost! Lost for the trees as sympathy
is demanded like a birthright, when suddenly
the 6th commandment glowers above
the 2nd amendment: Thou shalt not … kill,
marry, fuck? The soft eyes say thou shalt not!
But your ears boom with your own ostrich-growl:
Lord, redeem flayed clay unto stone, make me
found, round, hard of heart and prick, and I wouldst
kill and be killed for Thee until, eyeless in Gaza,
the theater columns buckle and the regretful edifice
redeems us all.

“The Ostriches” is a poetry cycle written and read by Val Vinokur and published by Public Seminar. The cycle is a continuation of “The Big Cats,” a 12-part series Vinokur began writing in June 2020 in response to COVID-19, George Floyd’s murder, and other world-shifting events as they unfolded.