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Opaque Confessions from the Other Life There are still songs to be sung on the other side of mankind. —Paul Celan On the airwaves, the Burundi Quartet is playing A boyhood adagio by Mendelssohn, that darling little Jew, Like a slow bee sucking it up from the flower heads. I’m partial to the banjo myself, that claw-hammer Clank and spunk, a crowdown over the mulberry tree, More flare than a hotfoot in the undertaker’s shoe. I’ve gone beyond the silence of the midnight kiss, the furtive Touch in a family pew, where half the angels are Packing heat, with their pimp hats and their mob hyperbole. Reminder to self: sometimes there’s not much distance between The concert and the concertina wire. Long story short: No one’s marked any shrines on the road map to Babylon. Though I’m no Moses floating in the wickerwork, I still Count myself among the orphans, the small fry and the fingerlings. Chipmunks are cuter than rats, but aren’t we all? The names of the Lord may be infinite, even if Shithead isn’t usually one of them—or, as Borges said, Sometimes the original is unfaithful to the translation. Light falls where it wants to fall, not where I need it to fall. And so does darkness, rippling out like a radio Dropped in the bathwater, just when I was coming clean. 67 • • • ...

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