Sheldon Brivic

The Center Explodes

Where is the color of the wind
you held in a moment of your life
blowing through the screaming
air of flames rolling up
down rivers of smoke
into our homes that become
streets of gasping blood
licking the knife of determination
as far from freedom as if freedom were
the part of the dream that doesn't get
remembered when you wake
in the unbelievable pain
of the hope of life
the unspeaking of tender words
the possibility in the middle of the air
that cannot be found or lost
when our skins are stripped away
and I hold in my hand the heart
of my lost brother that beats on
beats with the work of the dead
laboring not to remember us
pretending for us that we can be free
that we do not know, that we cannot
know the meaning
of the color of the wind
through nerves of the air
in the peace of regret
lanced by the blaze of waking
into icy bodies, shrieking limbs
into the dreadful truth of the word
that contains itself perfectly.

October 5, 2001

h

Sheldon Brivic, of Temple University's English Department, has written four critical studies of James Joyce, the last of which was Joyce's Waking Women: An Introduction to Finnegan's Wake. He is presently completing Tears of Rage: The Racial Interference of Modern American Fiction. His poems have appeared in Tracks. He has also written an unpublished novel, Stealing.

h