—And it came to pass, that meaning faltered; came detached
unexpectedly from
the place I'd made for it, years ago,
fixing it there, thinking it safe to
turn away, therefore,
to forget—hadn't that made sense? And now
everything
did, but differently: the wanting literally for nothing
for no
good reason; the inability to feel remorse at having
cast (now over some, now
others), aegis-like, though it
rescued no one, the body I'd all but grown
used to waking
inside of and recognizing, instantly, correctly, as
mine,
my body, given forth, withheld, shameless, merciless—
for crying
shame. Like miniature versions of a lesser
gospel deemed, over time,
apocryphal, or redundant—both,
maybe—until at last let go, the magnolia
flowers went on
spilling themselves, each breaking open around, and
then
apart from, its stem along a branch of stems and, not of
course in
response, but as if so, the starlings lifting, unlifting,
the black flash of
them in the light reminding me of what I'd
been told about the glamour of
evil, in the light they were
like that, in the shadow they became the other
part, about
resisting evil, as if resistance itself all this time had
been
but shadow, could be found that easily. . . What will you do?
Is this how you're going to live
now? sang the voice in my
head: singing, then silent—not as in
desertion, but as
when the victim suddenly knows his torturer's face
from
before, somewhere, and in the knowing is for a moment
distracted, has
stopped struggling— And the heart gives in.
Phillips, Carl. "Bright World" The Pushcart Book of Poetry. Murray, Joan, ed. New York: Pushcart Press, 2006.610-1.
