Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ENCODED DITHYRAMB, by TERRY RANDOLPH HUMMER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ENCODED DITHYRAMB, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: He sits on the bridge rail at midnight, watching
Alternate Author Name(s): Hummer, T. R.
Subject(s): Modern Life; Rivers


He sits on the bridge rail at midnight, watching
silhouettes of helicopters eclipse
Star after star over the river, spotlights probing

for a speedboat load of cocaine runners
Or the translucent body of a drowned girl, sunk
or floating, tangled in a queenly trail

Of brocade and foam. That morning, he saw
the first narcissus blooming
In sunlight on the boulevard, between a soup kitchen

and the vacant Masonic temple.
Invisible pulses, transparent symbols, flooded
the traffic zone, broadcast from satellites

Over the Egyptian heads of concrete lions
set at the boarded-up gate
Of the Holy-of-Holies. But now the river conceals

its mudbacked inventory of relics,
Its secret handshake. Through the fifty feet of darkness
his legs dangle into, under the bridge

Where homeless women keep house in the shadow
of a concrete buttress, the gods have grown
Opaque. He stares down, but nothing

gives him back his face. He thinks about this
While searchlights avoid him. What else
can he do? He thinks about it.

First published in The Kenyon Review, Volume 22 #1 (Winter 2000).
www.kenyonreview.org/roth







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