Machado

40 the minnesota review Christopher Howell Machado IfI could tell you, little crooked hand ofthe moon, what sorrow seems to be, you would hear an old song. It would be a song for ocarina, mandolin, and torn rings ofthe fedo hysterically sad and at large in the night town. It would be a song to stun the choir into silent and confused mathematical kissing that would have no end and no equal and no one to know its edges grieving with green and blue light. But, little odd crooked hand of the moon, the sorrow it is not all about love. And you think, "Ah, but the heart is broken in so many places, who could tell?" But I say this sorrow, this wing fallen into the sky ofthe mind, it must be for the crops and rats and the crushed poor rotten blossoms ofthe beaten and lame. I say it, crooked brother star. I say we have not touched the hem ofsorrows glistening like a stallion whose leg is broken and who dies stretched out in the bright strings ofrain slanting against senseless agony everywhere and all night. No, we have not even seen the thunderhead reaching up out ofthe prisons and the mines with sorrow that must soon obscure you, tipped white face, crooked beggar who cannot help at all! Crooked dizzy follower who hears nothing ofall our prayers chanted or wept out into the dark; prayers for peace, bread, and an end to sorrows which have nothing to do with the dead. ...