The Gates of Fact

    And were you careful? 

Yes, we were very careful. 

And did you look after 

        your own kind?

Yes, we looked for our own

when we were kind. 

And did you drag your 

   dead brother

along the epigrams  

of the poor? Sometimes, when

something sounded poor to us. 

Did you laugh

   with gold in your mouth? 

Sometimes. (One hot afternoon

             in Tivoli Gardens

            I saw a guy knock 

            a tooth loose

            on a crack pipe

he'd fashioned from a length of TVP

he'd lifted from a construction site. 

Handed to me with a freshly leveled smile. 

Blew smoke right through the gap, 

                 grinning and blinking.)

And did you hold yourself 

above the others? Sometimes.

    Only when busy

holding ourselves. And did fear

make you generous? Sometimes.

And the future ghost of yourself

          in others? 

Always. And did you tend 

quiet? And did you share tact? 

    Did you redirect your

health into others? 

                We tried. 

And how did you try? 

We had children, even

when we didn't have children. 

And having lived as long, were you 

          visible? 

What do you mean? In the ways
    that you bore yourself,


were you visible?

Well yes, but only when

   the arms of someone else

          bore us there.