Here’s the Spirit Man:
touch him as he passes
like a tossed orchid
through the wet street.
Mark him, his tenement,
win a year of good luck.
By the seventh hour his scratched face, eyes
pool blood, bearing the tattoo
of ancient pain:
tissue, bone, sweat—
you can’t really watch this if you’re a woman.
The festival forbids it: it’s for brothers, fathers:
men who wrap their dead sons and
they pray for a better year.
Even the reporter on the scene is a man
telling his crew what to blur and when,
until we can’t see what is an arm
and what is a jaw, an eye,
and what is a man anyway,
his chassis like broken stone?
No comments:
Post a Comment