He did not hammer on the glass pane
Against instructions; nor at the airport
Did he betray by any gaucherie
The guilty traveler’s nostalgia.
But always circumspect with a correct smile,
Fingered the proper schedule; in time
He was not overly surprised by rain,
Though there were rumors and an old ill.
He did not suppose the city would linger
Long beneath the marvelous propeller
But there were accidents ten years before,
Blood on the stairs if he chose to remember.
What is one world that he should sit transfixed,
Cut clean by wing’s immaculate precision?
What trace of home cuts cleaner still
And leaves him live in air, and speechless there?
How could he know that no one city gives
The perfect answer to the crooked ear?
Longing, he looks and sees, beneath the flare,
The lucid tragedy of local fear.
No road for him but the old tangle,
No landscape clean but the darkest wood
Where suddenly he sees corroded earth
And far beneath, his blood, his own blood.
Downward he falls, compulsive to the glare
Of searchlight’s trumpeted career;
Falling he fears the death of every want,
The cautious symbols of his own descent.
The secret sparrows in his folded hands
But is lost, lost in the landing here;
There is nothing but darkness and going home
And the small gossip of a ruin.
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