Jorie Graham: Then the Fog

    filled the fields. The way forward filled with the way
    back. Are those humans out there or
    just hollows filled with mercury & ash.
    When it comes into view the mountain is cleaved open.
    The silver is picked out.
    Thousands of them with their instruments up against the face of
    the rock. Their bodies break & they are replaced.
    Is it BC or AD. The years break & they are
    replaced. The event organiser imagines himself a vision seeker.
    He says their flesh must be useful.
    It is a sacred gift.
    No point in wasting it.
    They will learn to give it willingly.
    That becomes policy.
    Becomes theology.
    For a time it is almost law.
    Then for a time it is God’s law.
    The priests observe the men from the heights of the earth,
    they look down into the depths,
    they conclude it is not hell,
    it is a system of production.
    We go on.
    We do not turn back.
    The world becomes so small we can fit it into a handshake,
    into a glance cast across the room,
    a finger raised to the lips.
    Everyone’s fingers are crossed behind their backs.
    History welcomes us with open arms.
    It fans out dead ends in all the directions.
    Here, it says, here is knowledge of the world for you –
    don’t rattle your teeth that way,
    don’t lift your hands from sifting the dirt,
    don’t finger the barbed wire – it is the only music we get – that
    thrumming all along its miles,
    sometimes a bit of lightning like prophecy
    & a shock fleeing the wire into our hands, into our hearts.
    Are you a crown of thorns I wonder
    when the bolt jumps the wire.
    I think I saw a crown around here somewhere
    & beneath it an open mouth a screaming an unintentional
    nakedness.
    It’s not even the third act, says history,
    listening for the expected sobs,
    the wind or is it the wound suggesting sighs of relief.
    To break the spell.
    To crack the heat.
    We can hope for a change of scenery can we not, or a change of over-
    seer, a shift in the packaging, in the narrative bloom –
    at least the props –
    maybe not gold & diamonds this time –
    maybe not oil
    blood-drenched and inexact –
    maybe the elevators can stop ferrying us down for a while
    & we can be placed in front of these screens.
    We still have at least for now attachment to place.
    Time we gave up, time we traded in for
    this instant, this one right here in these syllables
    though nothing hangs in the balance &
    it is already
    gone, it is
    gone. Place has the upper hand if you look up.
    Will you look up.
    What is it bursts into laughter now
    as if you were asking for a commutation of this sentence, here,
    caught in this trap –
    are u an informer? are you sure,
    are u the curated audience to
    a fratricide, an ecocide, a
    genocide? How long has this
    been going on – what is a very long time, I can’t
    tell. But a trial is going on
    in my heart.
    I am listening to the witnesses. Shh.
    Everyone has a first-hand account.
    The empty jury box stares at us in amazement.
    The story is hard to believe.
    It is a powerful alibi – we tell it again & again –
    it is the history of poetry,
    a long string of luminous alibis,
    though the murder & the theft went on regardless
    behind the arras
    for all the singing up front –
    & the song was necessary, yes, it was soothing & distracting –
    it could justify, almost, our sense of
    being human –
    Call yourself alive? the jury-ghosts whisper
    loud enough for us to make out.
    And we promise again that we did not know, that we are
    innocent, that we’re just the
    talent, the event planners should be found to vouch for us –
    our wings are gauze, we’re on guide-wires,
    just here to create memories for you,
    to accompany you along these few seconds
    of time you still have –
    to slow them a bit,
    to help you linger.

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