The Order Of Things

if I could explain
                  to the dead             how
I stayed alive
when                                       why
I died     went unexplained to the living

                if in the displaced memory
I stopped                nowhere at somewhere
in a dead-end land       looking at the bones
dressed in rotting clothes            of those
who ended                 somewhere at nowhere

did I recognize myself
that december day of my birth
                      in someone else's coat
                   as I went around the pit
gulping back the starved air

did I come to realize
in the village warehouse
          with its cement floor hosed down
        its walls streaked with faded blood
that I'd survived for I didn't know better

driven by hunger             or a wanton urge
to kill               when I trapped a pigeon
under a cardboard box                 my bait
a dead earthworm in its beak        all of us
just extras in the natural order of things

if that was why         I set the pigeon free
and went back to the edge of the pit
to sit with the dead                why I ate
pieces of clay                      to become
what I must have been                   earth