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Hole torn in the language,
How shall we speak?
On the scale of war,
But where are the armies?
A few men and less money
Than houses cost on my block.
Counting the dead
Is like counting the stones
In a wall, when we have
No word meaning “wall.”
Wind acrid with toxins;
Makeshift shrines in the street.
When Stockhausen called it art.
We were outraged, and yet
Something art-like
Went into its making.
Only after it happened
Could we imagine it.
Which might also be said
Of the Hammerklavier or the Pietà.
Poem-like, it alludes. Babel,
Nineveh. The Tarot’s Tower
Broken by Lightning;
The Revelation of John of Patmos,
Who ends the Christian testament
By smashing the world.
Our cars grow larger and heavier.
People say they feel safer inside—
As if we had not seen
The tallest and heaviest thing
We know how to make
Melt in the fire and fall.
♦
Copyright © 2014 by Paul Breslin. Published 2014 by TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press. All rights reserved.
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