AN INCISION
 

Hegel’s "Idea" was thumping around

my ribcage and climbing inside the walls

of my throat. The invisible thaw

of the Absolute into language (a sound

like the babble of the homeless in the streets).

The pruner of tangles in my thorny

Fate, waiting for my arguments to bleed

their colors, die and fall. The stalling sleep

 

of wind after the leaves have already

gathered against the concrete, their thick

cold sweat of shadow afraid to reach, to give

itself up to the pending storms, to the risk

of uncertainties or of any return. And the prophet

of the gut — swirling, boiling up, unsteady . . .