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.

Comments

  1. Quin Finnegan says

    Mitternacht heißt diese Stunde;
    This hour is called midnight;
    Sie rufen uns mit hellem Munde:
    they call us with a clear voice …

  2. I am not Anabal Garcia.

  3. Louise Orrock says

    I might have had my teeth pulled and body mutilated because stalkers thought I was writing the poems. In any case, I am stalked online and off and so don’t look at people’s websites as much as I used to unless it is music because of the stress of the vile harassment.

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