MASS
We are the oarsmen with dew on our faces
who row into the morning without a sound.
We are the ones whom newspapers proclaim,
whom statistics speak of, who are in the frame.
We are the risk that you spread.
We’ve found each other and we’ll only be quiet
when we know for heaven’s sake why we’re here.
Do you perhaps have anything to do with it? Are you the one
who undermines us; makes us pine away in a sea of randomness
because there are so many of us: our wailing
will never be so loud as the scream of a woman
whose hands burn on the tram rails.
There she is. She is screaming as a woman
screams whose hands are burning.
The louder we make ourselves heard the more we
destroy ourselves and later we’re the incomplete ravens
of ink in the palm of your hand that you shake
as if it were a stranger’s in the last light.
Where are they going the oarsmen move
unnaturally backwards they beat the oars
wide as the water and retreat along the land.
