by Hibah Shabkhez
Usher me in, whispers chaos, grinning
Wickedly. The earth rails at the grey squares
Of concrete bordered with red lines of brick
Upon which you are grotesquely wobbling
In the aimless revolt of youth that cares
For order, and ashamed of it, is quick
And ferocious in calling for endings –
Usher me in, whispers chaos. I will
You to listen, I who walked the lines
Of brick twenty years ago. Life does still
Seep out of the cracks: in sickly grass-spines
In the occasional straggling leaf; and
The earth calls out to us, we brick-walkers
Old and new: stop your clamouring now. Stand
And let me hear the sounds of living things –
I ask not for rivers, for kits thumping
In burrows, or birdsong; just the cawing
Of one lone crow. One sign that I may sing
Above all this, someday.
Usher me in, whispers chaos, but you –
Raised in light-flooded rooms shut and shrouded
As though in mourning for the sun, let through
Like your aptly-named blinds, only rays dead
And immune to decay.