Robert Farrell
Whose Streets?
Here
We gather—
Under duress
Yes
And so because
Together was
Made a decision
There
Is a choice
Of what the day
Will be.
A question
About tomorrow
Is enchantment
This moment
Caught
Or rather
Given place
Where
Our fates descried
If only for an hour
We meet.
The kairos—this singing
Is itself a song
We choose—
Is possibility
Bringing
Forth ensemble. And though
No is strong
It also ends and so
Puts us face
To face with a beginning.
It will be remembered
Like the sidewalk
That sustains it
And the unseen
Tunnels below the street
From which friends
Emerge. Unnumbered
We do not mean
Or say
But stand
Even when we sit and talk.
What we lose
We gain and a demand
Is more than a suggestion.
Complicity
Is sorrow
And courage is knowing
What and what not
To fear.
Is this not winning
(Or having won)?
Is this not power
When
Collectively
The in
Becomes outside
Showing
Us a vision
Sun-
Lit
And given voice?
Robert Farrell is the author of Meditations on the Body (Ghostbird Press, 2017). His poems have appeared in Posit, The Brooklyn Review, The Santa Fe Literary Review, Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies and elsewhere. Originally from Houston, Texas, he lives and works in the Bronx, where he’s a librarian at Lehman College, CUNY.
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