Ancestry

1.
I can’t believe what the moon wrote
For the valley’s dying to find

                                                     —something

About the musky scent of lilacs this
Late in the year, darkening

Further the songs of the trees—
Where does she get off upstaging me?

 

2.
                                            Moloch—
The first angel banished from Heaven  

For hocking his mother’s wedding band
       for booze—

Wasn’t it you who first said, Sorrow
Cares nothing for how long one weeps—  

Or was it Schumann—
You or Haydn’s oboes who first moaned,

                                               Suffering—

Enter it through any gate you choose
And stay there, until the strings come in?