“. . . . . . . . . . I want in the heaps of rubble

at last to hear my voice again

which was a howling from the very start”

–Ranier Marie Rilke

The flailing screams

have been left behind;

most days now, I speak

with a calm bitterness.

My anger’s directed inward

toward my personal failings

more than to worldly disdain.

No longer like the nascent shock

of a newborn’s confrontation

with the air, I write now

in a desperate determination

to witness the insidious lies

I tell myself to survive

the language of the ruins.

(May 3, 2018)