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—15 In the Badlands He tastes of salt and disappearance, whatever wandering sounds like, that’s his name: a stuttering, stumbling context of drought and heat mirages, his skin sweat-sealed. White flowers bloom too early, surfeit and stall; he can recall just what will happen, and all the arguments against rapacious light. (Look out, there’s a hole in the world, what the light shed through a tattered ozone layer.) Clarity divides the seen, will he have better luck with the unbounded? Faithless summer so perfected will not heal rodent days, the chewed-through months, sun spoils the picture by noon. Instinct and impinge, song is a word he remembers, doesn’t hear, wished dialogue between birds and breath. Without the birds, insects eat up parched trees. Summer and the sublime come apart in his hands, a clutch of crumbled leaves and sun-burnt myths in cracked mud. Oh, destroy it so we can use it again. shepherd text-2.indd 15 11/22/10 2:07 PM ...

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