ME SELF SO FALLS THE SOVIET UNION

by Séamas Carraher

There's a knife
sharpens on me shadows
cold as an orphan's photograph,
sharpens words that know no mouth
(cruel as a parent in the ignorant
dark, all dirty with dictators!)
- like killing, and, my love.
And i eat and eat with
no swallowing
me head in bits for boxes,
O this world of loss, all lovely in soviets,
them square things and hard things
(i called them love in this dirty dark
and shout and shout
the likes of me!)
That sharpens on a shadow
calls that waster names
who eats in bites that cannibal his heart,
my world of loss, for this world all lies
and love on strings, both guillotine and hangman.
My calling but no answer
(and the day breeds their dark
all its beginning and end of time,
my waving, and loving, so stabbed!)
And sisters my sun in sponges
and mother and father who wanted me dead,
this brother in my arming
whose night like a knife
saying words like
"no" and "not" and "don't".
Who it's down here?  But not alone
(that other kid boxed into bits!
And the one done thundered!
And the one too hanging,
O all my sickness, weak without weeping!).
That shadow must be sharp as a spike
with crust hidden in front of suns,
(crazy for their mothering, them
murderers and thieves
rolling in their headless ways
all east in our falling like
leaves over Russia).
O sun and saintness in this war, wording,
like mine and yours
with no one home.
O love, in littling, and kept our
secret,
who buried and were battered
in towns much like another,
and you and me, (alone in blows
and knowing its scream
roots like clay
in all our homeless.)
But nowhere and never.
My house and yours now falling down.
My house in our never, still erect in rottenness.
So i call the sharpening silence
(and root on root my unbending mind.)
And the silence calls me knife
though their eating must all grey,
though they call you darkness
who are sinking (in your rising)
and them drowning in you, my light.
O shadow, (as i wave farewell)
if i had a sister, a small pretty
Jewish girl
and she called me home, helloing
them words and this eager mouth,
(that lovely love who sits
and must sighing)
all flying, brother, and unfurling in certainly.
O all, my life (not yet!)
O all my working class and soviet, still,
O all our ever. And up.
The brightness!