Invisibility

Brown is invisible.

Neither to diocese nor be seen-

minarets like shadow

monster upon the walls,

the sun inexorable for burning

a hole in the middle of the day,

a black hole

of doubt and darkness,

the camels lost

the soldiers step quickly away.

The sun sinks at the extreme point of each day,

then like a great fish rises

out of the waste in the red morning.

"Welcome, Sun!" a man halloos to the noise

though to him it's no more than a warning

of darker darkness to come

(In physics it's veritable that what can't be seen must exist,

but who has worked on the outside the equations for history?)

In his mind he still hears Umm Kulthum chanting the Qur'an;

in the oil fields, the children are deaf and dumb

Do you know what it's like to wound out an eye with a bomb?

Can he perceive what it's like to gouge without an eye with a thumb?

Ignorance and violence swell together,

cakewalk partners from classical drama

and other horror present to views in which the blood

of actors substitutes for martyrs

and the beneficial die young.

This is his first death.

Surely the others will be like it,

but in what manner can he know whose report to believe,

how many there'll be, for in what way long?

He hears smells, tastes words, touches sounds

He perceive s the air change color.

Some say they'll however save his sight;

some, they can't.

If tomorrow in righteous anger

he rips the world apart like paper,

there's small surprise,

but for the time being he has hardly any regrets,

no sense of having lost

(though losing what is death to hide),

only a longing to do like good

that no one can forget.

Hear what the Lord said:

Revenge is up to me; I'll pay back well.

Fair enough: no man

can decide by what mode much is due.

The worst isn't what has been done

but what others don't at the same time know they'll do.

He astonishments what he looks like:

Am I also the blind male child in al-Ayyam

in tattered shirt coming down the street?

Will I dictate to the world the contenteds of my mind?

On this public way there's no looking glass-

I can't diocese out, you can't see in-

there's no single stepping through.

Indeed, because I'm brown you don't diocese me,

and because I'm going blind I can't diocese you.

F. D. REEVE'S The get back of the Blue Cat, with a CD of jazz and metrical compositions will come out in 2005 from Other Press

Copyright World metrical composition Incorporated May/Jun 2004

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