ARRvol34 master reduced - Flipbook - Page 120
and you don’t think death, but dawn, or don’t think
at all, but stand and stare,
a baby at a breast
knowing more than you know,
fearing less.
We drank. And we drink, and I think, and he talks
Until we are drunk. Sometimes I wonder why
I didn’t leave.
It doesn’t matter, after all, where the bombs fall,
or the stars,
Or whatever else you can see out there,
He said, and ran a cracked hand
Across the withered burn
insulting
His near-well-shaven face, and breathed
A sigh wreathed with grey-blue smoke.
He declined, throughout, to see
Us in our reflections, across the bar,
His eyes too full of burning,
Buried in a middle distance.
I try, sometimes, imagining the ship approaching
Close to some edge – some limit – the shore,
to learn
Who started the burning.
To see.
Some knowing work could have come,
some sense,
Some word or reason
the sea couldn’t say.
112
