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Jordan Keller-Martinez

Jordan Keller-Martinez was a Psychological Operations Specialist in the Army and served in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2019 he received the Newman Exploration Travel Fund; he traveled to Kyrgyzstan to research and write

Passerines

by Jordan Keller-Martinez

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12

I walk the flight line after a nightlong sandstorm, which had fluttered

sparrows to me, offerings now without wingbeats, sparrows overturned in unison

with the linnets that sprouted shrunken legs, curled in like a dead spider,

defeathered. I am accosted by the whitethroat dead in a dried puddle’s outline,

in the hopeful refuge of. Something arrives and goes through their hearts.

I bring myself within earshot of a songless nightingale, where thick heat props open

the beak to a tongue’s taste of rasp. I’m in no dream, having not seen a sandgrouse swift

with water in feather. What do I have? No chiffchaff left alive, but the fragrance of one

under a trailer in gravel hidden from the summer attitude. I kneel to the one shrub

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What poet's epitaph reads, "The communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living. In my beginning is my end... In my end is my beginning."

Answer

T.S. Eliot. The last lines come from the "'East Coker" section of "Four Quartets."

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