Alissa Valles
Truce
Here the divided passions miraculously call a truce.
E. Montale
If you say, I made my peace with the mutiny
of asphalt, streets poured hot and flattened by
machines, the sudden view of a deserted alley
where ants file in procession through a melon’s
ruined cathedral and sirens wail while night’s
broken body sinks below the surface, you must
also say that peace is not, as its name suggests,
the somnolence of armies, but something else:
a battle fought with both hands tied, nothing
but a wakeful eye, a tongue to plead and curse
and the anxious ear of a child, hearing at night
a door open, not knowing if the steps coming up
the stairs are an annihilating ghost, or a being
of warm breath clothed thrillingly in the world.
Alissa Valles is a translator living in Krakow, Poland.Her poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, Verse, The North, The Antioch Review and elsewhere.
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