I don’t hate you, but then I don’t

hate anyone, anything, especially
that which is able enough
to have walked out into desiccated

evening,
imagining yourself to have a body
you glimpse inside and feel us

taking it apart. The velvet skin,
the fingers panoptic. The thing is,

though,
there isn’t some extra world of
of that separates us, semantics

pulsating the blood-brain barrier:
there isn’t
some mess that walks out into

the quiet and having had too much
machine and war and infinity
goes its mind and sighing bids

adieu, God. If we have learned
from history, from conqueror and

conquered, we will spend a night
together. Not curated, completely

together. Some third thing unknown
will come, Heaven-sent to kill us.

It will look into the dog’s eyes
who sprang from the gates of Hell

and guarded what was left to guard,
foreseen in your gaping maw,

then some fourth, then a fifth.