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            Incantation for the Man Outside

In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up

and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.

~Mark 1:35

There is no silence like the night by the train station

after trains leave, after moonset, after Venus moves

in an arc across the night to a spot blocked by Earth.

There is no silence like the brown bag, crumpled, supple,

drenched, the doorway filled with sack and trash, the way

the viewer’s eye reduces the weather-beaten man to drink.

There is no silence like the one in the tongue

where words wait for tooth and breath and nerve,

where threat floods the brain, knocking thought out.

What silence can there be for him when all sound is threat,

when outside is razor wind, when piss rims the nose, when inside

is forbidden, or inside the mind, a movie plays too loud?

The din stretches dawn to dusk. Pray.

The morning is still very dark. Pray.

Pray, make silence safe.