The Dogs of a House in Mourning and the Naked Girl

The nameless village is burned out
alongside a red clay road dried white.
This is no temporary silence –
April is hot, and the grass stinks.

I came here through a rabbit-hole
in the sagged wire fence.
Two dogs ran from a dead house.
I held my camera between us, snapping.

As a child I had a nightmare of wolves
but now I thought of the proverb
Thin as a dog in the house of mourning.
One grey dog, one spotted like a tiger.

Beyond their teeth and noise
was the shadow of something not a dog.
Children in the doorway of a broken building:
...