Annie Dillard’s Appetite
Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem
When God set up wide worlds, He did not know,
Or, if He did, that makes things even worse.
The splendor of the slaughter, black light glow
Its background, shouts in silent purple curse.
The deaths per second rage unnumbered by
The creatures being killed. If they should count
At speed of light —no, faster— they could try
To tally up the massacre, account
For all of them if black light counting might
Go faster than the rays from Milky Way
Stars onward through far galaxies where night
Enfolds them, death waylaying in their sway.
Black holes shrink, gobbling up each other far
Away, suns’ planets gulped without a scar.
~ Phillip Whidden
