15 June 2011

How could we?

(for fenrixIX)

It’s in the word
he thinks
I know it
mired down there
under the muck
of lines and dots
these punctuations of weight

It’s too much sometimes
the atmosphere and its blue
the earth and its ochre
the red of the sun
its too much to get done

Still, in the murmuring
susurrant
rasping strident
then mute
dumb and stopped
before the monument of memory
we all fall in
the vagaries of testimony

Yet will I witness to it
my people I will preach
prophesy at once and in
all ways that there is no other
way for me but in the word

Where-from spans the bridge
across the chasm?
that will save us? that will
damn us, damn me
yet, from this side will
I holler to you standing
in the wind on that
other cliff teetering above
your heavy stone

You’ll turn to your friend and say
what? what
did he say? yes!
Until I am hoarse
with crying I will say “I thirst”
and still, despite the weight of it
gravity relentless over us
every action equal and opposite
I shall believe that we might
unearth it, together

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