~
The blue square of light
in the window across the street
never goes dark--
the cathodes, the cordage, the atoms
working the hem of dusk--
traveling past the cranes and the docks
and the soiled oyster beds,
the trees loaded with radium,
colors like guns,
. . .
I came through the sodium streets
past the diners, a minister idly turning his glass,
service stations, gas, cars sharp in the light.
How long will the light go on?
Longer than you. Still you ought to live like a city,
rich and fierce at the center.
--From "Halflife," a poem by Meghan O'Rourke, first published in the magazine Poetry (September 2005) and reprinted in her collection Halflife (W.W. Norton & Company, 2007), pp. 23-24.
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