IN THIS BODY
In
this body at last, I supposed myself
thinking of tears, or of teeth that would fall,
in Blake's terms of leaves and of the autumn.
And in my terms the weight of the earth
and of the light interpenetrating, a pentacle:
the fall eventually to the knees, surrounded
by the young and their cries upward
that are also yours and my own
into the dense silver light of the maple.
PASSING MIDNIGHT
Across the street a woman growls in complaint,
stands bowed by the fence, her g lasses somewhere
lie broken on the walk, her friend who broke them
threatens her further . Her legs are set apart.
We've passed midnight now. She bends forward,
her cry deepened, curdled with the bitter,
and the threat of release. He slaps, she sits
down. Blue lights pulsing two cop cars arrive.
Soon they have blocked the traffic. At that moment
the street quiets. Now the street sounds
rise on their own. A car's sudden braking
resembles her throat-guarded cry: a stone thrown
into the pond of feeling where we are the echoes,
where we lie in the ripples moving outward to silence.
William Hunt
