The Blow

Who struck first and where, in what joint
             of clock time never
                          matters. When so many of them come
     everywhere thudding in, what's worst
                                  is nothing's to be done about it

but swallow hard. Forget. Suffer
                          doer and done to both
             sunk into a hissing pot, the hot metal
                                  quickly smothered, oh quickly —

But the eerie way it vanished! Shot star
                          across the night blackened,
             by day hardly noticed:
                                  innocent minor excrescence, swollen
                  gland, tree burl
                             trapped in an irritated throat —

So self seals itself up
                          as it must, to keep itself whole.
             Ignorant, in forced
                                  necessary sleep, the healthy system digests
                          its own illness first, then others':
             scabbed corpses covered,
                                  pothole arteries clogged

with denial: all things blow over
                                     eventually, the houses sit back up,
             the cars go back to work as usual —

But the dropped stitch still simmers
                          heedless, under ground
             in forests of acid rain, the slow seep
                                  of wrinkles across fair cheeks,

the stock market clangs shut
                          at first closing and then again, for which market
             when, around the timed world ticks
                                     blow by blow, as the wind settles and shifts

in Delphic caves. In Stygian
                          wine cellars. In London. Hiroshima. Manhattan,
             all poisonous growths encapsulated
                                     only to be spat out

year after year, as each stifled madness,
             each new wave finds itself
                          coming even as it's going, and vice versa,
                   at the stroke of Radioactive High Noon,

Surprise! Horror grabs us
                          stunned, in vicious gusts pummeled
             from Cape to Cape, from ear to burning ear, tacking

back and forth, from one barricaded
                                     safe harbor, one mass cover-up
             to the next, never to rest
                                               ever: how far a single shadow can reach
                                     is not to be known by day, O mio bambino caro
                          as the world blows itself away.

Patricia Goedicke
The Gettysburg Review
Volume 18, Number 4
Winter 2005

Copyright © 2005 by The Gettysburg Review.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.

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