Persistence

He learns the art of war in times of peace.
the art of peace in times of war.
few did so before:

to survive to bleed to know it all
this isn’t simple work
it’s learned by scratching the poem
past the cut
past the nerve

all the way down
to the white bone of the word.

and so he detains the caravans
of beasts and men
who seek some detestable Crete
to arrive after the clay.

he learns obsessions with labyrinths
not by smoking opium in some Japanese house
where certain terrible children
turned into poets
destined to die.

to survive to bleed to know it all
this isn’t simple work:

he knows there is too much abandoned in the world
to leave.