Jon Cone

PROTEVANGELIUM OF JAMES (18.2)

Now I slouched in my cab and did nothing.
And I stared at the sycamore
and I saw that it didn’t bend in the wind.
And the high crows didn’t move.
And I stared at the fields and saw
a corona of dusty
cornstalks. Workers

lying in rows and their hands
were cracked. They lifted
the dust to their mouths and they put the dust
in their mouths so as not to taste what they put there.
Their faces they pointed skyward. And

there were hogs
that did not want to move and so were led.
The slaughterer raised his knife and his hands
remained up. And

I stared upon the waters and beheld
the hogs there and they drank less than an ounce,
it was nothing. (How great the span
between zero and one.)

And they moved in due course.

~~~

Note:
This is an adaptation of a English translation found as epigram in Mary Ruefle’s poetry collection Tristimania (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2004).

Jon Cone is the author of The Plesyre Barge (Greying Ghost), Family Portrait With Two Dogs Bleeding (Phrygian Press), Sitting Getting Up Sitting Again (Standing Guard in a Cornfield Press). The chapbook Least is due for publication this year by Greying Ghost.