The British journalist’s voice was spent as she said
(unenthusiastically, the interview now over), “Thanks,”
with the eager young insatiable American official
turning, then, to other matters.
But the voice
—a European’s, flat, well schooled in the world’s
hope-pulverizing particle storm’s gifts of disappointment—stayed,
the syllable’s slight elongation something on the order of
the querulous sendings of frail human wonderings out
into the void, as if the waning of her voice spoke
all of history’s ups and downs, a honeycomb’s packed maze of cells
whose lights shine through their tiny paper membranes
too thin not to be available to being torn,
light leaking from a world cracked open,
sky seen through the pavement I walk down.
from CivilizationFind more by Elizabeth Arnold at the library
Copyright © 2006 Elizabeth Arnold
Used with the permission of Flood Editions.