Dead-line

When truth comes out
like gravity’s jaws yanking bodies out of the air;
when truth comes out and starts a suicide dive

they can’t pull out of, and it makes a hole
much smaller than the authorized footage shows;
when truth comes out
like a cloud carrying paper dust and screams
out to sea;

when truth comes out
like inmates of the asylum clammering
at the gate,

I want the old woman hanging out wash,
the gardener digging up bulbs,
the salesman driving to his appointment,
the general weighing strategies,
to hear holy voices asking:
what form of surrender are the children
holding in the cups of their hands?

And slowly realize that the life they lived
has been re-written in the history books
as strange new birds flock to their trees,
and I try to clean your thigh smeared with birth-blood,
and I try to tape the broken window against the cold,

and I think of each plot as a stew we must eat,
and each building of the city
casting shadows like fallen tears.

When it finishes with us, I hope
they still carry the emptiness
of the betrayed wherever they go;
a curse will follow them a thousand miles.

When it finishes with us, I won’t know
what country I’m flying over,
I won’t know whose eyes are shining in the moonlight.