Black summer, black Vermont. Who sees this mountain rising nearby in the darkness? But we know it there. On the other side in a black street of a black city a man who is probably black carries a Thompson submachine gun, and don't tell me how that feels who carried one two years in Italy; blunt-barreled power, smooth simple unfailing mechanism -- the only gun whose recoil tugs you forward, toward the target, almost like love. Separated by this immense hill we share nevertheless a certain knowledge of tactics and a common attitude toward reality. Flickering neon, like moonlight in beech leaves, is fine camouflage. To destroy can be beautiful. I remember Mussolini's bombed statues by the @3dopo lavoro@1 pavilion, thick monsters transformed to elegance by their broken heads and cut-off arms. Let the city be transformed. A man with a submachine gun is invulnerable, the sniper's sharp little steel or the fist of a grenade always finds him surprised. Hey, look out, man! What you trying to do, get yourself killed? They're everywhere, everywhere, hear? -- the night's full of them and they're looking for a dead nigger -- so watch it, go on fox feet and listen like a bat: remember everything I told you. You got to be smart enough for both of us now. But are you there? Are you really there? Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A CLEVER WOMAN by MARY ELIZABETH COLERIDGE THE COLORED BAND by PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR AT CASTLE BOTEREL by THOMAS HARDY A GOOD PLAY by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON THE OLD SERGEANT by BYRON FORCEYTHE WILLSON THE MARCH OF XERXES by LUIGI ALAMANNI |