Where Astrology Ends

John Sibley Williams

Thank god the stars
are not your daughters
anymore. & the wise
man chained to a stone
hacked apart, restored,
just to be eaten again
for bringing us fire
no longer looks like
your grandfather. After
twelve hours in the airless
factory your town was built
around, the way he’d carry
that fire home shares only
a passing resemblance to
the deities of old: all envy
& spite, whir & hiss, prayer-
worthy violence. How
the machinery of that world
hasn’t changed so much as lost
a bit of faith in translation. Faith
that cruelty sanctioned by higher
powers is a fair trade-off for all
this living in the light. Faith that
sacrificing your youngest might
rescue drought-gutted crops.
When you pull the sky down
each night to show your ten-year-old
daughter what it means to rain,
thank god there are far fewer gods
in the name of fealty to defile her.

© John Sibley Williams

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John Sibley Williams is the author of As One Fire Consumes Another (Orison Poetry Prize) and Skin Memory (Backwaters Prize). An eleven-time Pushcart nominee and winner of various awards, John serves as editor of The Inflectionist Review. Publications include: Yale Review, Atlanta Review, Prairie Schooner, Massachusetts Review, and Third Coast.