MARIO’S STUDY

Angry centuries on the bookshelves.

Electric sharpener filled to its grisly

death teeth with skin and bones.

He belonged to the second group; he

says he believes in the Silence of the Light.

It goes with the dust here, she says.

She flies erratically on the back of her

thoughts of waiting women to

the velvet tongue across turned wood,

to settle like wine on the evening

shadows, to relieve a bloodless

tension, to say why care?

When an aching distant throat jumped

into her goblet and cried, as tiny as

a stillborn diamond.

Listen, it said

silence is not yet a dead subject.

3.5.76

nyc

photo: Dan Brinzac ca '76