Ghosts? Gods? God?
In the streets and the trees and the asphalt and stone
In the scrawl of the lights that blink “Open”, repeat,
In the hum of the wires, roar of engines, the beat
Of the pulse of the rap from the car at the red
In the streaming of clouds, in the sirens, the dead
Reach from doorways and kerbside transactions and lies:
We will all be forgotten and everyone dies,
But the names of the nameless who died out of hand
Cluster in echoes we don’t understand
Get tangled in edges of human and wild
In the road signs, the leaf-shapes: the name of a child,
The thresholds remember, continue to gape
When the patterns are broken and stories lose shape
They crowd at the borders to clothe the cold bone.
Ghosts? Gods? God?
7th March 2014
Sarah Monette made a post about a book about the murder of an unidentified child in 1957, and asked the question that is my title here.
