POETRY: Canaan by Geoffrey Hill
I They march at God’s pleasure through Flanders with machine-pistols, chorales, cannon of obese bronze, with groaning pushcarts, to topple Baal. At crossroads they hoist corpses and soiled banners of the Lamb. The sun takes assize. Aloof the blades of oblation rise, fall, as though they were not obstructed by blades of bone. II Fourier’s children their steeds, kazoos, the splashed fetlocks— deliquescent manna that most resembles a sudden urban sleet— shedding innocent blood their ragged fusillade a bit of a laugh indifferent hatred stained with their own works: détentes of corpse-gas reactive furnaces of the spirit immemorial sightings in Canaan: fig trees and planted vines and the groves unguarded messuage for jackals. [...]