Book: The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly: Poems Collected and New
Quotes of Book: The Throne of the Third Heaven
Employment in the Small Bookstore"Twelve Poems, 1975The dust is almost motionlessin this narrowness, this stillness,yet how unlike a coffinit is, sometimes letting a live one in,sometimes outand the air,though paused, impends not a thing,the silence isn't sinister,and in fact not much goes onat the Ariel Book Shop today,no one weeps in the backroom full of books, old books, no oneis tearing the books to shreds, in factI am merely sitting heretalking to no one, no one being here,and I am blameless,More,I am grateful for the job,I am fond of the books and touch them,I am grateful that King St. goes downto the river, and that the rainis lovely, the afternoon green.If the soft falling away of the afternoonis all there is, it is nearlyenough, justlet me hear the beautiful clear voiceof a woman in song passingtoward silence, and then that will be all for meat five o'clockI will walkdown to see the untendedsailing yachts of the Potomacbobbing hopelessly in another silence,the small silence that gets to be a long one when the past stops talking to you because it is dead,and still you listen,hearing just the tinyagonies of old boatson a cloudy day, in cloudy water.Talk to it. Men are talking to itby Cape Charles, for them it's the samesilence with fishing lines in their hands.We are all looking at the river bearing the wreckageso far away. We wonder howthe river ever came to be sogrey, and think that once there weresome very big doings on this river, and now that is all over. book-quote
