from Book II, Part 1, Studies in Caesura
Ground Zero
8:15
Beyond Mount Fuji, ritual heat.
And light − through paper screens, through eating-sticks
and bowls where the boiled pulse refused to cool,
through bone, and the heart
bound in the blood’s courteous habit − in the island chain
where the warrior cult rakes low over waves
towards the carriers,
raw, atomic air…
a child running, running,
face sliding down the jut of jawbone, the drip of fingertips
on the burning road,
from high, silver distance, a city sighted,
the crosshair the bridge and river made
marking blast ratios,
shadows, vapour where they stood, the thin
scrawl of their humanity across ransacked stars.
8:46/9:06
On impact,
the towers
ring, a tuning-fork skyline juddering, and people impossibly
flying, arms and legs out-stretched.
Tiny from upper storeys, letter Xs
repeated single-file or in throwaway clutches,
settling to craters where the streets had been, to what
remained of Mister Kurtz,
who had disappeared up-river, in a book we were reading
about the dark.
9:47
I am crawling through the centre of a scream
I am crawling through sirens
Through spatter of people
I am crawling through people taking charge
I am crawling through pictures on TV
I am crawling through the stations
That were closed, through people
Running, running after other people
I am crawling through ring-tones
I am crawling through the bang, the bus
In the air, I am crawling towards my friend
Who will never find me
Here, crawling through the centre of a scream
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