I too think it is wonderful
how everything goes
these days
professors in drag
freedom through semen
no God
no master
though one of the earliest
signs of colony
collapse
is an anarchic
movement
of the bees

Our ice age when it comes
will shutter
as swiftly as the shadow of a cloud
overtaking
a child
desperately gathering momentum
on a swing set
in the park
where her parents have spread
the picnic
a heartbeat ahead
of the freeze

Wherever we walk
it sounds like ice
is cracking
under us
what with this
clicking
of the knees

Dante lodges the Beast
in frozen Lake
Cocytus
like a lighthouse
of agony
we too are traitors
in this circle
on blades we made
of broken faith
we skate
faux-elegant
futile figure eights
but whether the ice
will hold or not
is now a matter
of degrees

The old wine
has shattered
the old bottles
and the sole glassblower
is an old man
with a wheeze
we swish and spit
finely aged
religions
vintage moralities
the feast is over
and here we sit
too small for our chairs
gourmands of the orts
connoisseurs
of the lees

Meanwhile
men who pray
more often than they eat
wives behind them
sons behind the wives
daughters-in-law behind the sons
grandsons behind the daughters-in-law
steer their tiered
triangular
flocks
to the north
to the west
and migrate
overseas

Amit Majmudar is a novelist, poet, translator, essayist, and diagnostic nuclear radiologist. Majmudar’s latest books are the poetry collection What He Did in Solitary (Knopf, 2020) and Godsong: A Verse Translation of the Bhagavad-Gita, with Commentary (Knopf/Penguin Random House India, 2018) as well as two novels published in India, Soar (Penguin Random House India, 2020) and Sitayana (Penguin Random House India, 2019). His novel Partitions (Holt/Metropolitan, 2011) was shortlisted for the HWA/Goldsboro Crown Prize for Historical Fiction and was named Best Debut Fiction of 2011 by Kirkus Reviews, and his second novel, The Abundance (Holt/Metropolitan, 2013), was selected for the Choose to Read Ohio Program. His poetry has appeared in The Best of the Best American Poetry 25th Anniversary Edition, numerous Best American Poetry anthologies, as well as the Norton Introduction to Literature, The New Yorker, and Poetry; his prose has appeared in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2017, The Best American Essays 2018,and the New York Times. His first poetry collection, 0′,0′, was shortlisted for the Norma Farber Poetry Award from the Poetry Society of America, and his second collection, Heaven and Earth, won the Donald Justice Award. He also edited an anthology of political poetry, Resistance, Rebellion, Life: 50 Poems Now (Knopf, 2017). Winner of the Anne Halley Prize and the Pushcart Prize, he served as Ohio’s first Poet Laureate. He practices diagnostic and nuclear radiology full-time in Westerville, Ohio, where he lives with his wife, twin sons, and daughter.