Great god,
what geography of pain we are walking through.
What a season of convincing clouds that
hang like smoke, as when the soul,
unassailabl e,
has found release through manumission.
And what indecent will of those who
saw no cause to care, foreshadowing, therefore,
the concentric rush of time running out.
This is fact: the harsh articulation
of someone's life that, in the end,
will end too soon.
II - The
Freight Car
We move on, affirming the proximity of everything,
eyes breaking open to the light: installations here,
photographs and objects there, the visual details of
time-kept dying. Suddenly: an intractable fragment
of truth-a freight car brought, finally, to a halt
on the same illicit logic of rails. No stench now;
human grime gone, washed away by water and soap
and the varnish of time. Still it affronts: the tight
seal of steel and wood, a prisonhouse suffocatingly
small, non-sequent, disconnected from the event.
If steel and scarred wood could recount their story
from memory, could beg forgiveness or bring back
the dead, then my hand might not flinch at their
touch as I enter, enter the pas t: One evening
a cantor was singing before a full congregation,
true worship known by heart. Peacefulness in
the infinite, and the lightness of candlelight
breathlessly still when: a muster of men from a
shadow realm broke forth, cutting off the prayer.
Cantor, families and friends by the thousands,
