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Poetry

Necropolis

The dead shuffled forward in their camps
lost without desire or aim,
they moaned in their doldrums
failing to remember their names
or recall the faces of old lovers.
They rattled like filaments in burnt bulbs,
unfamiliar sparks in a vacuum.

Over them I sang of cities left behind:
skyscrapers and loaded elevators
workers losing sleep over morning work
husbands and wives dining in silence
children storming like televisions in the dark.

I sang to drag down the living,
a world in trade for you.

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The Brooklyn Rail

FEB 2008

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