But once you sit down at the table you're locked in
    You're alone with the warm mouse smell of the village
    and the mud houses where nothing moves except
    the street contortionist, twisted like history
    everyone wants to suddenly explain
    with the old rulers dead and on trial.

    So I shift no smile when they take me to the pit
    Show me the big metal bullet they say makes us
    all equal.
    Though common now as a wall clock where I come from
    They watch me for terror,
    narrow eyed as heroes home with the
    Old Fire God's head , while
    I ransack the world for the best of words,
    those words that move mute matter,
    that heave and turn like earthquakes
    beneath the great mountains of Asia which
    in their shiftings crack and gather
    and all the doves of Bangladesh bang the red hot
    poppy sky of silence..

Copyright © Jo Neace Krause, 2001.  All Rights Reserved.