Poetry May 2008 Atlantic Monthly

by Brooks Haxton

Cuneiform

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The wedge sank five times into the clay,
and a word, which had been spoken in a breath,
lay still until the gods’ names were forgotten.
Then, when strangers took the tile in hand,
while stars sailed into the dark
beyond the world, the dead tongue
in the clay began to speak.

Brooks Haxton's new collection of poems, They Lift Their Wings to Cry, will be published in June. He teaches at Syracuse University.

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