page 182

The concert

Well, it's a quarter to one,
the musicians are still hiding,
I've had too much to drink,
and the room is packed hard
with people and stink:

sweat mixed with pot mixed
with perfume mixed with smoke
mixed with somebody jolting
my elbow, and suddenly
beer on my shoes.

The whole thing has gone to my stomach,
which is a blackbird,
rainbeaten into a smudge
of dead feathers.

And then the boys emerge, with beards,
and all the people cheer,
sway dreadlocks, plaster themselves in
each other's arms, shut-eyed,
roll-headed, fervent
as pigs at the teat.

I buy a bottle of water and
walk to the balcony outside.

Half the people who ever lived
are on the earth today.

The nomads are dead. The tillers are eating
from ashen corn-sheaves.
I never knew my grandfather.

And this is what we do.