How Much Earth by Philip Levine
Torn into light, you woke wriggling on a woman's palm. Halved, quartered, shredded to the wind, you were the life that thrilled along the underbelly of a stone. Stilled in the frozen pond you rinsed heaven with a sigh.
How much earth is a man. A wall fies down and roses rush from its teeth; in the fists of the hungry, cucumbers sleep their lives away, under your nails the ocean moans in its bed.
How much earth. The great ice fields slip and the broken veins of an eye startle under light, a hand is planted and the grave blooms upward in sunlight and walks the roads.
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