turning and turning

9.15 a.m.                     dreaming in Yeats            two days until the exam                the alarm

            of the ‘phone               ringing                           England                        calling

in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot

dreaming of flight, the airman

foresees his death

10.00 a.m.            Ground Zero

            the common room             the common focus            one box containing the world

11.00 a.m.            no subway  no government employees            central Toronto a dead town

 

            it’s the girl and boy holding each other outside the lecture building               sunshine

it’s                    the blood-dimmed tide             already              in the ashen city

 

12.00 p.m. hear the falconer                      WE WILL HUNT THEM DOWN & KILL THEM

            hushed the feeling/say it            things fall apart the centre cannot hold

                                                mere anarchy is loosed upon the world

we are half-rhymed  if that                scattered in attitudes of gawk & revelation

loosed upon the world

if the centre cannot hold [these things]

“If genocide is indeed the dream of modern powers […]

it is because power is situated and exercised at the level of life,

the species, the race, and the large-scale phenomena of population.”

 

 4 p.m.                         passionate intensity breeds

breath-holding

 

say                    worst

that echo of Lear in all our headache

 

5 p.m.              “everywhere / The ceremony”                   we train ourselves in

            correctness                             emergency procedures for such situations

and                              we fail                                                                          (they fail us)

 

there is watching, slack-jawed                              Tom Clancy on CNN                            there is

                                                breaking the news

“The end of history is over”

[e-mail from a friend at CityTV

            THE HEADLESS HEAD OF STATE SLOUCHING TOWARDS JERUSALEM]

 

its hour come round at last

 

its second / this

unfolding of seconds at the speed of (f)light

suddenly grounded

 

and we move through rubble / bone-exposed

hearing every tick (as ¾