Daniel Weissbort
Poem
I stand in the hallway listening,
my hearing splintered and torn by the town’s clamor.
I stand trembling in the hallway,
turning my hearing this way and that.
The walls vociferate,
the underfoot city tunes up.
Calls burst about me in the air,
I listen hard, trying in this confusion, to detect
the noises of my own kind.
Suddenly a child’s coughs echo unmistakeably
but impose no order.
My body starts.
My foot shifts and the floor screams,
the hugged armful of sounds drops onto it.
The pattern, the structure
embodying silence, still evades me.
For sure, there are no tribes here —
only total fragmentation, all against all.
Over the pandemonium of this sleeping household,
the infant’s cry reaches.
Unsmiling, she stares warily —
her eyes that have neither top nor bottom to them
will not close —
seeking the borders of my eyes
as the panicking swimmer seeks a shore.
Page(s) 68
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