The Faithless

by Bruce Boston

A great gray beast
of incertitude
comes stumbling
through the centuries,
churning up corpses
and mud.

We have seen
that long gray snout
peering over our
shoulders before,
hot of breath,
grunting,
incomprehensible
as an aardvark.

We have seen
the Word go down
to the butcher's block.

We have even seen
the Existentialists
in their tight pants
and baggy underwear.

And still it comes,
tracking up the pages,
corpses and mud,
blood and incertitude,
all those fine sentences
stubbing into the future.

Appeared in Berkeley Poets Cooperative #20, 1982