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Two Poems 

Paul-Victor Winters

Genesis

Trees bearing fruit. Then birds, then fish. Man
modeled out of clay. Days into days.
Eve bore Cain, who wandered the land
of Nod, begat Enoch, who begat Inad. Amazed,

God sat back in his golden chair, watched
as one begat another. Some killed.
Some were punished. And many begat much.
From Ham, the Jebusites. The sun filled

the sky. And man seeded the soil. And God
watched the gears slide against each other,
the passive master. Shem begat Arpachshad.
And mothers begat sisters and brothers.

And I begat you and you begat me. And God
keeps spinning these watch parts, misshapen cogs.

Untitled (Lucidity)

Wandering fields and vacant barns back home, I learned to reload the camera deftly; I carried spare rolls of Kodachrome always. I knew or thought I knew the difference between subject and object, between the sun’s rising and its setting, between a lie and a fiction. One of these things is true: There are shadows on the cave wall, but they are not shadows. We’re all just Carthaginians at the foot of the Alps. There is no such thing as ‘history.’ At least one of these things is true: Shadows themselves are objects; objects are progenitors only. Werewolf? Neither wolf nor man. A frost-blanketed field? No knowing what stirs beneath the soil’s frontispiece. The Twilight Zone = Eastern Standard Time. Truth or Fiction vs. Truth or Dare. Oh, these empty pockets. These muddled images. Brume-dimmed shapes in the distance. Hypnagogia vs. hypnopompia. Back home or here. I learned to speak with authority and to keep myself awake. I learned to fake a smile and feign agreement. Oh, your pockets are empty, too. You know, they don’t even make Kodachrome anymore. You’ll never see the Alps. I’ll never leave this dim cave. Truth is crepuscular. The best we can. The very best we can.