Roots

Magnolia, ligustrum — tangled roots I grub

to unearth wood far too thick & meaty

to lop, targets for Ben's grinder, steely

sharp jaws that judder, chatter, & stab

what watered & fed the trees, living sponge

reduced to slivers, bones of the old garden

food for the new, nothing is ever virgin

all of us spring from ravaged ancestral dung.

A Polar Explorer

by Joseph Brodsky

All the huskies are eaten. There is no space

left in the diary, And the beads of quick

words scatter over his spouse's sepia-shaded face

adding the date in question like a mole to her lovely cheek.

Next, the snapshot of his sister. He doesn't spare his kin:

what's been reached is the highest possible latitude!

And, like the silk stocking of a burlesque half-nude

queen, it climbs up his thigh: gangrene.