Nothing has happened, nothing has been broken,
everything is still in place, including yourself;
even now the juice of alarm begins to settle:
the bomber drags away her diminishing roar.
Nothing has happened; this was practice,
you are free to return. If there is a day
to come when you will be called out
to answer for somebody else’s doings, this is not it.
Yet what is this delicate balance, that it shall not
be shaken? On the bookcase the figurine teeters;
which of its two thousand years gives it the right
to withstand one blow of the wind? Somewhere over
the plains an angel gathered enough speed
to outrun even the sound of her own voice.
In consequence, for miles around the night
exploded with the violence of her escape.
Yet she has not escaped. Behind her
and her ghostly silence, wherever she goes,
she drags like a harrow her unsettling past.
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