Before it starts, we are willing to give our names
by the fistful. We package our sentences to volunteer
our locations, and live without questions. Don’t make us be less. What we do
before the wall is see the middle like a window. What we see
as it rises is our feet, bindweed seeding, teasel and purslane.
Above, the sun shifts, unkillable, in the migration of sky.
Shadows—
If we browse the turns before the turns
turn darker, we will have sung every corner of this rounded
city. When light still has instance we will have walked each dirt road
in company with fleeting strangers, talked as community
to the now-trembling ones. But we have lost our direction. Footprints
pass to shadows and seek a path far enough to follow.
Betrayal—
Each controversy is a detail removed
from paradise. How do we hold who we are when a chair is denied
to those nearly tripping, the hearth from the people in cold
unsleeved, and from the most hungry a thick slice of meat? Gone
are the depths of our pleasures. We stay very empty,
stay quiet. Though inside we scream.
Vanish—
A sky on one side of the wall; the terrible air
and guilt, but still sky on the other. No one crosses. To find the will
to build a wall vast enough to crack apart, to raise such shade
on those near-verging on this country, to halt the banned ones
who carry unbearable their shadows—who are we if we can
betray such names and think it truth?