speak to me, then.

I am sick of the new buildings and the echoing close

and the woman who pulls the weeds out at your doorstep,

thinking she’s doing good.

 

If you are not asleep, or dead,

you must be thinking of something.

Magpies. Fish. House spiders.

You must have something to say.

 

I am left to fill this smallness

and start the world from scratch.

It comes out like a child no one wanted.

It wails in a pitch no one hears.

 

Anything I say falls on its face

or reels back into the things you don’t.

I let out an inverted harangue calling the dead

to go pick up their bones and make peace.

 

Not because hostilities are over,

or the truth has entered or exited anybody’s heart,

but because we have run out of time,

and you are still saying nothing,

 

and no one wants to hear the noise.