Clamor from the Street

So when shall the next grief befall and flatter your radiance
with its blackguard riposte like a dungeon opened to us all,
only our mark of X cut by a dagger into the page . . .
This is no question but a promise the best will reap in turn
for the lack of action where the nation sleeps upon one side,
where we say, Once you wake, turn on your other side, continue
to defy the needs of humankind to survive the silence . . .

Where was I when the battle raged but in her bed loving her
lovely limbs whose flesh only such stouthearted lovers will dare
until bombs explode over another sky and we are called,
though I go nowhere but back to the task of greedy pleasure
before she and her sisters are gathered in the roped-off street
to be blinded and raped, should that be the way of men’s power,
and I am no man save when my lower regions tell me so . . .

(10 October 2011)

copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander