Now the sweep of the wing of a goose that had broken a child’s arm
with a tackle
on the next farm
was cut short as the Romans had planned to cut the cackle

of the geese on the Capitoline Hill
and utilized by the slattern
turned spick-and-span housewife to dust her sill.
They must still be sacred to some deity, these geese in a holding pattern

over the same pharmaceutical company’s front lawn
on which their ancestors were staked
till their calls,

we hear, had drawn
down more geese flying north, must still ache as their ancestors ached
for a chance to fend off a night attack by the Gauls.

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