Basil T. Paquet

Easter '68

I have seen the pascal men today.
Long past rising to a passion
they sucked their last sun
through blued lips,
buttressed their intestines in handfuls,
lifting their wounds to the sky
they fell silent as the sun,
as words not spoken,
broken Easters of flesh
girdled in fatigue strips,
red arching rainbows of dead men
rising like a promise
to give Jesus the big kiss
and sinking down-
only my breath on their lips,
only my words on their mouths.