UP FROM THE FLOOR
They sit in silence. In camera, around the table. Terrifyingly
stern, stares that grew antlers in my eyes.
It was as if thunder or bolts with electricity were being decreed.
The self-important, the pompous, well-fed and self-assured.
Here to hazard a fling of the dice--to decide whether another
should eat.
Employment. The interview. One with yellow tusks protruding
to his coffee cup. Eyes, some primordial forest cut for a
firebreak back of his soul. And I think of the desperate, those
lacking bus-fare to get to such a carnival. Valuable postage
money, photocopying, scrimped dollars for a suit to entertain
the pumpkins dicing for a worthless garment. A scavenger run,
piles of white applications heaped as bones in a graveyard made
careless after a violent storm.
Or elephants in tow, trunks wrapped around the other waiting
for the ringmaster to signal the question important; whether
a neophyte new at sharpening his teeth at a daily wage should be
allowed presence onto such a hallowed ground.
And I think such things are the very matter of evil--that these
are vile intemperates with their accursed shortlists deigning to
be gracious, shaking hands after the fact. Mafioso manners, the
sickly grins back of the shovels used to bury another.
[59]
MEN OF SHADE
All the candles are passing out, one by one.
They have evaporated their brightness,
overpowered limpid cracks in their own flames, seized
the outpouring air with hesitant breath to brave
a flicker of new hearth while knocking holes against
the warm men decorating fireside shade.
[60]