Friday, October 25, 2013

This Can’t Be

 - Bruce Smith
 
the place of consequence, the station of his embrace.   
Or else I’m not son enough to see
the innocence and the spiritual fiddlings
in the uneven floorboards and joists,
in the guttural speech of the pipes,
in the limp and the lack of heat.
All we need, all we really need is light!
And let there be a roof with no leaks.
Oh father landlord, fill up all our breaches.

He gives himself to the cracks; into the chinks   
my father lowers his bone,
the do-it-yourself funeral. He holds the wires   
in his teeth. He strips the insulation back.   
If it’s black, it’s juiceless; if it’s red, elegiac.



from: Silver and Information. Copyright 1985.
 

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