. . . don’t avert
your eyes from what
you cannot bear:
that the child gathered
herself up in her joy, was playing,
then she—
no. Then he dug a trench
in her body and put his childhood into her.
And now, peer into her. Isn’t it
your face there, in the wide look
of the dead girl,
in all the world that wears his darkness: old
speeding cadillac on the bridge, twin
darknesses fitting under
the lip of the fender, in the drugged
redhead’s ripped
fishnet stockings on Telegraph: poor beaten wretch.
—From the split
yawn of the cypress, summon the cry.
Summon the memory into which
you cannot vanish further,
you who endured
the terrors of your life
in his name . . .
all right then. That’s
fine then. What you can’t
recall shall be your instrument . . .