Читать книгу Stranger - Adam Clay - Страница 18

Even a Straight Line Must Curve to Shape the World

The fire it almost starts itself

Looks like water comes from somewhere else

—KURT WAGNER

My thoughts lost each day

in whatever linear pattern

appears at my disposal,

as if blaming the light

of noon for a midnight terror

wouldn’t be nearly enough

recklessness for all or any

of us. On Short Street,

the steeples repair themselves

into a more fashionable

version of church: rhinestones

and glitter, retired pennies

cover all seeable spaces.

In my version of the future,

there’s no need for disrepair,

no need for scaffolding,

no need for rerouting a river

up to the surface. Downtown

of yesterday and the stones

remain in the memory

like reminders of blocking

out the past. My mind

in these moments wants

to return to the linear, wants

to string a thread from here

to there in such a way that you

would think it had always

been there. At times here the seasons

feel fake, the summer’s patience

only constructed for the sake

of violence and the sake of sustaining

our voices into the fluid corners

of night. Eventually terrorism

will look something like a truckload

of men driving through this quaint downtown,

plowing over parking meters,

resisting all attempts to monetize

what little open space we have left.

Of course our sense of terrorism will have

to adapt—perhaps even you will find

another use for your spare change?

Most things don’t make sense

until they make sense—the birds

wash up in piles, their talons and beaks

the only evidence of what they

once were. In the next minute

you’re skipping rocks across

the glass of a lake,

the sky so blue that ice

could fall right out of it.

No matter how hard I try,

I find myself returning back

to a logical way of organizing

everything, and I wonder

if I could recognize

madness in its current

river of form? A day on loan

can still be a type of day, the way

the light declines moment by moment,

and we witness the sky moving

away from the earth, a wreath of light

like a vision, like a weariness so divine.