End of the Applause
A forest of tree trunks shattering, a thunder in the rafters, applause so long
the hands begin to shed scales of skin that weigh themselves
in the air and discover the inadequacy of law, a small body rising
in a vastness of space and light to make itself known, and one man clapping
considers silence, a dust mote silvered with breath above his blurring hands,
his flesh brightening into burning coals, the dust a star in a universe of light
where the reaches are surging with detail dog-faced men classify,
label, box, store in warehouses of records, but this dust mote,
this focus for the mind, absorbs the pain in his fingers like a martyr,
glows with light as though ascending, and it is, like the chain
on a cuckoo clock, and he can think, calmly, of the disappeared,
the repatriated, the party officials revolving through their posts,
a dance in his twenties where the expected steps were a blessing
beautifully executed by the women in ripe dresses, the men prescribed
suits each to his station, suits without wrinkles, suits they could die in,
and his hands flutter away from rhythm, a Monarch’s awkward levitation,
not like this dust, and he considers death, how it spoils a suit
with the body’s decisive release, the constant waste of a body stopped
with a public declaration, then who has time for this constant affirmation,
and through a tilt of his head, or a disassociation of clouds, he witnesses dust
multiplied, his private vision dispersed to the new Secretary, the factory heads