Moya Cannon's "Prodigal"

PRODIGAL

Dark mutter tongue
rescue me,
I am drawn into outrageous worlds
where there is no pain or innocence,
only the little quiet sorrows
and the elegant joys of power.

Someone
businesslike in his desires
has torn out the moon by its roots.
Oh, my tin king is down now mother
down and broken,
my clear browed king
who seemed to know no hungers
has killed himself.
Old gutter mother
I am bereft now,
my heart has learnt nothing
but the stab of its own hungers
and the murky truth of a half-obsolete language
that holds at least the resonance 
of the throbbing, wandering earth.

Try to find me stones and mud now mother
give me somewhere to start,
green and struggling, a blade under snow,
for this place and age demand relentlessly
something I will never learn to give.

--Moya Cannon,
from Oar