Slate-scraps, split stone, third-hand splintering timber; rusted nails and
_       _sheet-tin;
dirt floor, chinks the wind seeps through, the stink of an open sewer
_       _streaming behind;
rags, flies, stench, and never, it seems, clear air, light, a breeze of
_       _benevolent clemency.

My hut, my home, the destiny only deferred of which all I live now is
_       _deflection, illusion:
war, plunder, pogrom; crops charred, wife ravished, children starved,
_       _stolen, enslaved;
muck, toil, hunger, never a moment for awareness, of song, sun, dawn’s
_       _immaculate stillness.

Back bent, knees shattered, teeth rotting; fever and lesion, the physical
_       _knowledge of evil;
illiterate, numb, insensible, superstitious, lurching from lust to hunger to
_       _unnameable dread;
the true history I inhabit, the sea of suffering, the wave to which I am
_       _froth, scum.