Night In its rush Of words Caught The words were totems The words were beasts Day slowing down Against a mode of survival The words were mistakes The words were pleas The words were asking “stuff” Stuff of reason Floods and famine War and strafing Pace of the day A culture of helicopter Hunted, haunted by And sound is a menace Tatter, make sense of Obstacles stabs of reason No language you understand Arable land? What is authority Tiny fragile human What is it Pity authority Against tiny fragile human The words were ambiguous The word were closures The words were a necklace A lasso, a rope Linking zones, these are words To represent a field of meanings You would reckon a pitch Not a meaning A whirr a world You would reckon a sonata You would never sleep Copter’s blues Never sleep And razor wire Hiding as a specter What is it? Your shadow, a specter A knife Then water Then drowning Drowning child Drowned The words were continuity Or fear The man with guns and keys A refugee, a spectator O come to Balzac’s Paris Long ago Come to the skyscrapers New York Stack up here Or disappear, down You can live vertically And create sound False cybernetics You can hide You can blend in Yearning Animals at riverbanks You can never live The high pitch, New York Fever and money Among strangers Words were travelers Gentler animals And their sound The Scandinavians open To close down They hunker down Everyone is a dossier Everyone is hungry Shelter is post-cultural Come come from South Come up this way A better life A leader is opening Then all shut down A new dream Beyond the next border No expectations Take you in Wait till it be night again The words are designing pursuit They design their collapse Night again May art never be forbidden May all escape their tormentors The words are slippery Crossing to safety in night again Wait to what is waiting Then you are in night again In front of you, night again To identify what is wild Your own ethnography It’s night again A bark canoe, a risk Fetishized hunger Take you away Retaliation for your beauty For crossing of borders For hunger takes you away Carpet above Grave below As one writes to reveal The map fails Define “cringe” Define “migrant” Define “deprived of a homeland” A pensee sauvage Penchant for the flash Intense light greets you You might die Stars to guide you You might be embraced You might have to run You could live Look up Abstract stars Pitiless The words were pushing To break hard To welcome you Anne Waldman, the winner of the American Book Award for life-long achievement, is the author of numerous volumes of poetry, including the forthcoming Voices Daughter of a Heart Yet to Be Born. She co-founded the Summer Writing Program of the Jack Kerouac School at Naropa University with Allen Ginsburg, and is chancellor of the American Academy of Poets. Her website is annewalman.org.
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