“. . . . . . . . . . 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)
