Archives for September 2018

Vigil

Mitternacht heißt diese Stunde;
Sie rufen uns mit hellem Mund

from Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme
by J.S. Bach

That familiar Friday night
dark, both inside and out,

and five of us scattered in silence
at the end of each sentence

like periods in a paragraph.
Smelling of shit and sweat, a laugh

breaks through the snoring of a sixth
not far behind me, and a body

adjusting itself to the forgiveness
of a creaking wooden bench

falls back to snoring after the creaking
ends. So it can’t be a bad dream,

and the candlelight illuminating
our presence is, in fact, just enough

to suggest forgiveness. I want to sleep
too, too tired to laugh.