(after Wallace Stevens)
I.
Among twenty
abandoned space stations,
blackbirds settle to scavenge.
II.
Artificial intelligence
going mad
takes advice from blackbirds.
III.
Blackbirds play in autumn winds,
a small part of the
habitat's rapture.
IV.
A man and a blackbird
and a hostile alien soldier
are one.
V.
Blackbirds stop whistling
only to crack the whitened bones
in old settlements.
VI.
The last settlers dream of blackbirds.
Ice feathers across the biodome.
VII.
Oh worm-men of Io,
why imagine bird gods
when blackbirds hunt you?
VIII.
We know the rattle
of feather-stalled ship's engines
and curse the blackbirds.
IX.
When they fly out of sight,
they mark the edge of
the universe itself.
X.
Police-droid blackbirds
get green light.
Bawds of privacy cry out sharply.
XI.
The shadows of alien ships
and the shadows of blackbirds
converge.
XII.
The twenty-first settlement is burning.
The blackbirds must be crying.
XIII.
It was autumn all year.
Blackbirds came and went.
So did humanity.