Today's poem is by D. Nurkse

Meditation In Time Of Civil War
       

1
When I was a child, we marched to the barricades, with only a chant to protect us. Our grievance
was loud and our banners bright, but the sticks fell swiftly and seemed to know us: aren't you the
broken one? The one who pees and runs?

Yet at nightfall our government trembled. In the high lit window, a brooding figure that had been
staring out lowered its gaze and turned away.

2
But now I am the target. The crowd sings a taunt, intimate in its contempt, as it masses with
torches on the outskirts of the city. I am the élite, though all I own is this narrow room with a
view of a factory wall, a bike wheel padlocked to a chainlink fence.

The shadow that falls across your child's sleeping face—apparently I cast it.

Make the bed, I am told, in which you are hated. Turn out the lamp that hates you. The dark will
hate you more.

It's a long way back to childhood. The steps are steep and icy. The streets are cold and lit by
whirling blue lights. The sirens come always closer.

Still the government teeters, sure to fall.

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Copyright © 2024 D. Nurkse All rights reserved
from The Manhattan Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission