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Under lowering dawn skies like winegrapes\r\n shot with veins of hot yellow\r\nA high Crescent City moon could not distend\r\n her beams on the town below\r\n\r\nNo helpful light shone inside\r\n the dark storm circle whose scything edge\r\nSickled flat the swamp tupelos\r\n sunk the fisher\'s bateau neath the sedge\r\n\r\nA water Hell that blew out well baffles\r\n bent float derricks at the knees\r\nHurled hundred-year-cypress over drowned bayous\r\n at a city of fleur-de-lis\r\n\r\nIn the Big and Too Easy, voodoo dolls bob\r\n in a flooded church celestory\r\nAnd those sad caught on rooftops watch\r\n the ghastly parade of memento mori\r\n\r\nOnly wondering why\r\n\r\nWhy? Where big rivers conflux the sea\r\n there will always be a port of call\r\nSo too if deepwater energy is to be found\r\n jackknife rigs reek of methanol\r\n\r\nLife ebbs and flows where the wet brown land\r\n of Evangeline meets Gulf surge\r\nAcadian man and immutable economics\r\n uneasy forgather just upon that verge\r\n\r\nEach forgetting that ever anon the restless foam\r\n driven by searching wind\r\nRoars up from Barataria across The Quarter\r\n measuring alike foe and friend\r\n\r\nWho yesterday gaily bedecked for Fat Tuesday\r\n gamboled on the trolley ground\r\nNow thinking on this, the wisest on their housetop peak\r\n waiting to be found\r\n\r\nOnly wonder when\r\n