Joy is never pure,
Never homogeneous anyway—
Too many impurities have intermixed
With happiness for it to be meaningful anymore—
I see your face change
But I don’t see you smiling—

Joy is the negative of the negative
Ever climbing toward the total emotional zero; its double,
Rage, its ground state, it, a climbing-toward
Intolerant of the pliancy of a forced feeling of a positive—
I see your face change
But I don’t see you smiling—

While trite, joy does not stand on its own,
Infirm, quarantined, a hopeless pandemic—
And that’s what makes it more explosive than any bomb
Deadlier than anthrax and poverty combined—
I see your face change
But I don’t see you smiling—

Rage draws the lines along vulnerable fault lines
Of a marble statue, its friction like a whetstone
Tempering the war-machine of so nomadic a sensation
A scattering of the borders, invasion of the homeland—
I see your face change
But I don’t see you smiling—

We take our torches, uplifted, to the rows of headstones
And set fire to the desiccated grove of sprouted hands
In prayer from chapel to crypt; let darkness fall on the path,
Let hatred **** the forced smile—
I see your face change
But I don’t see you smiling—