KAFKA’S AXE & MICHAEL’S VEST

for Michael Burkard

Still winter. Snowing, still. Can it even be called action, this patience

in the form of gravity overdressed in gray?

Days like this, the right silence can be an action, an axe,

right through the frozen sea, as Kafka calls for. A necessary smashing,

opening. Though silence can also be a shattering, closing.

Think of peace & how the Buddhists say it is found through silence.

Think of silence & how Audre Lorde says it will not protect you.

Think of silence as a violence, when silence means being made

a frozen sea. Think of speaking as a violence, when speaking is a house

that dresses your life in the tidiest wallpaper. It makes your grief

sit down, this house. It makes you chairs when you need

justice. It keeps your rage room temperature. I’ve been thinking

about how the world is actually unbearable.

About all those moments of silence we’re supposed to take.

Each year, more moments, less life, & perhaps

the most monastic of monks are right to take vows

of silence that last a decade.

Though someone else (probably French) says our speaking

was never ours; our thoughts & selves housed

by history, rooms we did not choose, but must live in.

Think of Paul Celan, living

in the bone-rooms of German. Living, singing.

What does it mean, to sing in the language of those

who have killed your mother,

would kill her again? Does meaning shatter, leaving

behind the barest moan? This English, I bear it, a master’s

axe, yet so is every tongue—red with singing & killing.

Are we even built for peace? I think of breath & my teacher,

Michael, one of the least masterly, most peaceful people I know,

& Kafka’s number one fan. I think of the puffy blue vest Michael wears

when his breaths turn white. Even when I’m doing my best

to think axes & walls, brave monks & unbearable houses,

the thought of Michael in his bit-too-big deep blue vest

leaks in. & I don’t think I will ever stop trying to sneak

into casual conversation the word “ululation.” If only all language

could be ululation in blue vests. If silence could always be

as quiet as Michael, sitting with his coffee & his book, rereading.