pilfered

White Dwarf

This is for people who disappear
for those who descend into the code
and make their room a fridge for Superman
--who exhaust costume and bones that could perform flight,
who shave their moral so raw
they can tear themselves through the eye of a needle
this is for those people
that hover and hover
and die in the ether peripheries

There is my fear
of no words of
falling without words
over and over of
mouthing the silence
Why do I love most
among my hereos those
who sail to that perfect edge
where there is no social fuel
Release of sandbags
to understand their altitude

--that silence of the third cross
3rd man hung so high and lonely
we don't hear him say
say his pain, say his unbrotherhood
What has he to do with the smell of ladies
can they eat off his skeleton of pain?

The Gurkhas in Malaya
cut the tongues of mules
so they were silent beasts of burden
in enemy territories
after such cruelty what could they speak of anyway
And Dashiell Hammett in success
suffered conversation and moved
to the perfect white between the words

This white that can grow
is fridge, bed,
is an egg --most beautiful
when unbroken, where
what we cannot see is growing
in all the colours we cannot see

there are those burned out stars
who implode into silence
after parading in the sky
after such choreography what would they wish to speak of anyway

~ Michael Ondaatje

(ed. note ~ I've been looking for a poem to put up for a while now, and happened upon this one last night, and it fits. Nice one.)