Pigeonnier

He walks through a cloud of blue moths —

       one for each apostle — into a round tower

with a peaked chapeau of tiles, the oak door

       rotted, wasps fierce in the vine, limestone

steps hollowed. Rows of nesting boxes dark

       as the eyes of city whores; pigeons sleeping;

a wedge of sun chiseling mica through dusky

       air. Now the quiet clamor of roosting birds

kept for the eggs he candles in the sacristy;

       for the sweet meat of their breasts and dung

dug into the Abbé’s onion beds; for music of

       a sort: the crooning of forbidden sex, blood

bubbling from a man’s cut throat. The boy

       reaches to their stink, peering at novices

working the pump below: their creamy thighs

       and sleek-dipped heads, their oxter hair and

sideways looks; soapy laughter, stiff nipples,

       wide eyes, and slender hands. Now this back-

plumage black as smeared soot; iridescent

       necks; this underwing down dense with heat

and lice and suffocating dark. Their amber

       eyes stare incuriously as he kills, wringing

out last sobs of life, lining them up neat

       as martyrs cut down from a cross of air.