"rehang" poems
After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won't
straighten themselves up, after all.
Someone has to push the rubble
to the side of the road,
so the corpse-filled wagons
can pass.
Someone has to get mired
in **** and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and ****** rags.
Someone has to drag in a girder
to prop up a wall,
Someone has to glaze a window,
rehang a door.
Photogenic it's not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.
We'll need the bridges back,
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.
Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls the way it was.
Someone else listens
and nods with unsevered head.
But already there are those nearby
starting to mill about
who will find it dull.
From out of the bushes
sometimes someone still unearths
rusted-out arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.
Those who knew
what was going on here
must make way for
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.
In the grass that has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out
blade of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds.
—Wisława Szymborska
Sep 1, 2015
Sep 1, 2015 at 7:07 PM UTC
*I know it was me
that fired the ultimate weapon
the one that destroyed the us we loved.
Vaporized inside mushroom clouds
of destruction.
Sometimes
I say I still love you
or still want and need you.
or that my heart misses you.
but then I say I dont.
I feel like I am in
the aftermath wreckage
of a hurricane.
But inside the violent winds.
i hear the soft breath
of your name.
So instead I rehang pictures
in my living room.
To hide the faded outline
of where the one of us
was hung for so very long.*
Aug 26, 2015
Aug 26, 2015 at 6:55 PM UTC