Return To Smallness, The Observations {ii} Poem by Desmond Kon

{hidden stairwell and subway}
{commune for the infantrymen}
{beyond and despite the pain}

this acknowledgement of life thus, the raft
all our men, red-faced women cling, fling
fingertips in soup bowl, saliva in a dribble

and its sorrow too; shafted between bases
capitals stippling this world; live out here
this relief world and I miss it, old silences

the round barn, without interest, rips clean
without the shaking, chilly and still quaking
to be sparing, austere as these tense verses

{use the chalk for the circle}

return me to faraway places, faraway times
rites like savants on knees, belting habitual
this afternoon not dying desolate; nor alone




Author's note:

An earlier version of this poem appeared in The Bend, a literary journal published by the University of Notre Dame.