TUESDAY

During the night
Tiny goats rained down heavily.
By morning,
Everything was white,
The noise was terrible.

The housewives rushed outside.
Their gardens were going.
Goats no bigger than sequins
Came up to their knees.

They scaled the trellises,
Bloomed there like roses.
They are the pine needles.

The door stood on the high hills
Shaking their antlered heads.
They saw starvation.

Which wife was it
Who picked up a goat
The size of a snail,
Who watched it doze in her hand?

Soon everyone
Cupped a sleeping goat in each palm,
They sang to them,
They slept so sweetly.
They were so tiny.

Palms up, the people
Made their way down the road
Back to their homes
And the tiny goats followed.
Strangers were stupefied!
The goats were like locusts! Worse!

Then the wind rose,
And the goats blew off,
And the people, inconsolable.

In the morning, they saw
The goats had eaten all the bad weather.
In the morning,
Even the pines hung heavy with fruit.

Nights when the cold snapped like a turtle
They thought they could see a new constellation,

Hear a new, harsh sort of singing.
Under the domed sky,
Everyone in that village
Slept like a top.