Fierce Departures: The Poetry of Dionne Brand

Thirsty

III That north burnt country ran me down to the city, mordant as it is, the whole terror of nights with yourself and what will happen, animus, loose like that, sweeps you to embrace its urban meter, the caustic piss of streets, you surrender your heart to a numb symmetry of procedures, you study the metaphysics of corporate instructions and not just, besieged by now, the ragged, serrated theories of dreams walking by, banked in sleep that wild waiting at traffic lights off the end of the world, where nothing is simple, nothing, in the city there is no simple love or simple fidelity, the heart is slippery, the body convulsive with disguises abandonments, everything is emptied, wrappers, coffee cups, discarded shoes, trucks, street corners, shop windows, cigarette ends, lungs, ribs, eyes, love, the exquisite rush of nothing, the damaged horizon of skyscraping walls, nights insomniac with pinholes of light The Poetry of Dionne Brand / 13 ...