Landscape with Figures Partially¹ Erased²
D. A. Powell

First, it's just the faces disappearing.
Because, deflected³（偏离的） , as the faces long have been,
with their hunched⁴（缩成一团的） trunks（中继线，运动短裤）
and mercilessly（残忍地） twisted necks,
they can only be regarded from a ground's-eye view.

The bellwort tips its fallow head down
in the hot tomato field. The green snake rests
beneath the green leaves, and the air is toast brown.
Diesel⁵（柴油机） tractors grind to the road and idle there,
their heads bowed, too, like giant wooden horses
meant to sack an unsuspecting city.
Down come the earthen walls.

My father used to pour libations（饮酒） onto the ground
from the gas pump's nozzle （喷嘴） and I'd swirl⁶
its iridescence⁷, respire it into my lung's core,
so woozy, so sick, and awed⁸ by the vapors⁹.
Fire beguiled¹⁰ me, too. As did the concept of force.

Whole villages burned in a single spritz.
Even now the past gets altered. We forget
because our friends won't suffer that subject again.
Because the students tap their pens uncomfortably,
look around to see if anyone else is taken in.
That's when we figure it's best to make a joke.

I've wandered, now, from the corrugated¹¹ sheds,
with people half in and half out of nuclear range.
My retention¹²（保留，扣留） of facts is not a silo.
Even if it were, some disrepair gets fallen into.
I like to think we dismantle¹³ thought
as much as tortuous¹⁴（扭曲的，弯曲的） thought dismantles¹⁵ us.

I have seen sharp men lose limbs. Women too.
A hand pulled off, conveyed into the hopper（漏斗） .
But these were country matters.
Like frilled silhouettes¹⁶（轮廓，影子） of flowering wild carrot,
white against the mackerel white sky,
the texture¹⁷ is imperishable（不朽的） , the details

so far off. These bodies: their contours
uncertain. Just a general cast to the light.