The
Wound
There
is a sort of wound imagine
is what’s not visible between us.
Empire was the wound
it was dealt from such a distance,
there is a threshold
here in the city you touch and are touched
by
to practise being grateful –
it crosses the
border
between sense and estrangement.
We are often
polite and are silent about it
but here in my small mind
it
is, it weighs us down.
Tattered flight
light bone structure
number of wing-beats per second
and a distant explosion –
but looking all round it left
not one unwounded here.
In
silence of the aftermath
what is there to be said
watching
the trees put out leaves?
Acting out unacted
desire
he comes up behind you
An offcut of
that silence –
‘Empty
out your pockets!’
Waking up, the dream –
it was like something dark in a puddle of light
how in the early light
all
things seeming possible
taking possession of someone else’s silence.
Yes but everywhere you go
this
city – it looks back at you
Through fractured lenses.
In the anxiety of afternoon
taking it up again
to share my space
a felt answer –
he returned,
with a splash, this man with his salutation.
It’s a sort of greeting and an animal
sound
this stateliness this violence.
Out of the sun towards me along the street
this shadow
something hooded
and all of its history, half-buried behind it.
And you who are always near me
making
‘door music’
or here it is
stretched upwards
at the edge of the photograph, where they sit
comfortable with their shadows.
Is
it someone wearing a badge,
is sad behind a logo, a sort of failed dignity.
It’s on his back where he can’t reach to scratch.
A man who slows, where summer wastes
An enormous strength down here.
The building workers, ranged along a wall
are bodies
being as if
each sculpted out of idleness
and into a frieze
of moments
tattooed, like something
that waits to
be deciphered.
and a single ear ring’s cheeky gold.
The dust each man
is carrying in his skin
in
every fold and crevice
will be washed off as if it were the money
that flows away from him.
But now for a moment something
archaic comes to mind
here in the noon silence,
its
sense of a commanding presence.
Copyright © John Welch, 2008
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