A Liberation

trudeil 57 Dennis Trudeil A Liberation The people on the roof of the cathedral, and the ones with captured boots in the back of a flat-bed truck: they whose rifles and flesh gleam from all these eyes— the eyes of the laundress whose spine unbends, the eyes of the waiter who had hated boots, the eyes of the begger who may still beg, the stare of the ex-officer in disguise, the eyes of the woman and her fetus . . . And the sky deep with clouds and the dead, the dead with their white shadows upon these napes, and the marrow of the nun who lost God, who found humanity, and the sun reciting lamppost, yellow shirt, thumbnail, eyeglasses!, ceaselessly reverberating the asymmetry of clothing, of hair and breath . . . The hour is a fulcrum; it has been brought to this plaza by items unspeakable: parts of bodies, sweetish fumes that still linger in stomach linings, electrodes and corners of smiles beneath haircuts. It was carried a mile at a time, on a grandparent's knuckles, on children's tongues. The cathedral is steady. Its walls could not slide apart now—there are too many bodies, too many civilians, nothing but civilians!, pressing against it. On its roof, its balcony: giving it eyes and a throat, a throat which has felt emptiness scrape inward and in, and now inhales a breath as loud and impure, as vibrant as any ripe fruit or nod and laugh of history. ...