Poetry

Song
by C.K. Williams

A city square, paths empty, sky clear; after days of rain, a purified
sunlight blazed through; all bright, all cool, rinsed shadows all vivid;
the still-dripping leaves lush, sated, prolific.

Suddenly others: voices, anger; sentences started, aborted; harsh,
honed hisses of fury: two adults, a child, the grown-ups raging,
the child, a girl, seven or eight, wide-eyed, distracted.

"You, you" the parents boiled on in their clearly eternal battle:
"you creature, you cruel," and the child stood waiting,
of going to play on the slide or the swing stood listening.

I wished she would weep; I could imagine the rich, abashing salt
gush springing from her: otherwise mightn't she harden her heart;
mightn't she otherwise without knowing it become scar?

But the day was still perfect, the child, despite her evident
apprehension, slender, exquisite: when she noticed me watching
she precociously, flirtily, fetchingly swept back her hair.

Yes, we know one another, yes, there in the sad broken music of mind
where nothing is lost.

Sorrow, love, they were so sweetly singing: where shall I refuge seek
if you refuse me?

C. K. WILLIAMS