WILLIAM LOGAN

Chiaroscuro

Such harsh slow rivers cleave a dawn above the marsh, where reed-cutters gather a few drv sticks. The shattered call

of heron gnaw the lake’s daguerrotype. Particulars would argue a misfortune along a shoreline raked against the mist,

whose tall aqueducts impair proportions of the stone, and turn against the weir. Through this landscape, steaming, raw,

two figures pass, burdened by straw panniers, dragging a rude wheeled cart loaded with fungal vegetables cowled like heads.

They squat among their appetites. One cries across the lake. The heron pause, and reed-cutters turn from their blades.

Around them, gross monarchies, rotten boroughs, a church whose silver chalice daily chastens the vellum indulgences,

a topography festered with plague. Such ordinary fires as on the wet sands flare magnify the vengeance of the continent

and to what cost complicate the shore.