more room for
equivocation.
Forget about
salvation—
what the world
needs now is a little
protection—
cover
from the letters
falling fast
from the best
of good books,
not as words, but rocks—
not bare facts,
but hard ones—
and not even
big ones, which at least
make good anchors,
but pithy
and dense things
like the pit
in your stomach
when you hear
how the preacher
pummels and bruises
with his shibboleths
the tenderest of truths
to a powder:
that ambivalence
exists
and conviction
blackens easily;
that power
and obscurity
are tides
which move the Earth;
our wavering,
perplexity,
and doubt
all runneth over.
