narrative landscape

Two stanzas from Kolmården Zoo, by Bill Coyle, a suprisingly powerful poem on the subject of death. From the March 2006 issue of Poetry.

Still, to teach children this is how things go
is one thing, to insist that it is good
is something else—it is to make a god
of an unsatisfactory status quo,

this vicious circle that the clock hands draw
and quarter, while the serpent bites its tail,
or eats the dust, or strikes at someone’s heel,
or winds up comprehended by a claw.