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AUTO WRECK
Its quick soft silver bell beating, beating
And down the dark one ruby flare
Pulsing out red light like an artery,
The ambulance at top speed floating down
Past beacons and illuminated clocks
Wings in a heavy curve, dips down,
And brakes speed, entering the crowd.
The doors leap open, emptying light;
Stretchers are laid out, the mangled lifted
And stowed into the little hospital.
Then the bell, breaking the hush, tolls once,
And the ambulance with its terrible cargo
Rocking, slightly rocking, moves away,
As the doors, an afterthought, are closed.
We are deranged, walking among the cops
Who sweep glass and are large and composed.
One is still making notes under the light.
One with a bucket douches ponds of blood
Into the street and gutter.
One hangs lanterns on the wrecks that cling,
Empty husks of locusts, to iron poles.
Our throats were tight as tourniquets,
Our feet were bound with splints, but now,
Like convalescents intimate and gauche,
We speak through sickly smiles and warn
With the stubborn saw of common sense,
The grim joke and the banal resolution.
The traffic moves around with care,
But we remain, touching a wound
That opens to our richest horror.
Already old, the question, Who shall die?
Becomes unspoken, Who is innocent?
For death in war is done by hands;
Suicide has cause and stillbirth, logic;
And cancer, simple as a flower, blooms.
But this invites the occult mind,
Cancels our physics with a sneer,
And spatters all we knew of dénouement
Across the expedient and wicked stones.
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GONESSE
Their throbbing rotors whirling through the darkened sky,
Blending awkwardly with the sighing sirens' hubbub,
Droning and wheeling back and forth like insects,
The newsmen's helicopters hang above this colossal corpse,
Splayed across the earth, bleeding fire from blackened wounds;
Each one jockeying for position with shocked rescue choppers,
Small, powerless to lessen this total catastrophe -
But unlike the rest of them seeing only pure gold below,
Little awards awaiting them within the strips of twisted metal;
Observing, taking notes, quoting, filming, slavering,
In order to write what they do not feel
And to make the whole world reluctant witnesses,
Such that we can all gasp briefly, and then move on.
Next week we are supplied with a nice big earthquake, or sunken
boat,
And thus the usual cycle is perpetuated, deafening us and deadening
us
Until scant compassion remains, or none at all:
The question "How can this have happened?"
Becomes all too soon "Why should we care?"
For decades-long wars must somehow pall,
One killed rock-throwing child is much like another,
Total and utter global catastrophe won't be occurring this month,
Dictators will dictate, shocking famines are a staple diet,
And none but the murdered can grasp genocide.
But the loss of an adored pet can stun and devastate,
A fatal auto wreck on the street roundabout grips and sickens,
Two Hollywood stars' divorce must command our close attention
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And yet ten thousand killed is but a number.
The circus continues.
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