An ancient city of light is buried
in my chest. Before the French (or was it
the Germans) my father tucked it in there
& placed me on a boat. Be a good little
smuggler & forget our names. At night
I opened my mouth to the water & strange
shapes came to investigate. I begged them
to absolve me. The Lord spared the animals
guilt, for in the wild everything that lives
lives instead of something else. A quiet life
has turned me earth - soft mud & eggshell.
When you kissed me a stove flicked on,
generators began to hum. We left each
other like altars in a bombing run. In this
room where you are not, night lowers itself
all around me. I stare at my fingers - little
archaeologists clutching brilliant shovels.
They leap from my hands & begin to dig.
After unsayable years, the clay, remnants
of lamps, & then the city, & then the light.
The archaeologists cart its body to a fountain
where old women drop their buckets & fall,
wailing like chimneys, to their knees. A boy
is healed when his wound is brought & bared
before the glow. Of course the government
intervenes, as they must always intervene,
orders it cloaked in metal & dropped upon
a country. But there it wraps the children
in shawls of unfused atoms, their mothers
in gowns of light-silk, & fathers fall asleep
in trenches while rifles morph into violins
playing as we waltz in a room by the river,
as the light melts our shadows into one
shadow, & Sal, we thought, we thought
we were dead, but we are not yet
finished dying.