Friday, February 18, 2011

POETRY: Schoolhouse by George Moore

Somewhere in China
a schoolhouse burns
an old woodframed schoolhouse
that kindles and explodes
consumes
as the news of it consumes
kindles explodes
a human moment increased
by the decrease of single possibilities
and the word that carries it
crosses water
that could not be carried
an ocean was no enough
insight only in the aftermath
for the news says this is this
no more comment
but the violinist’s note
the poet’s first word
the engineer’s revolutionizing eye
in democratic urgency
kindled and exploded
consumed
three hundred young lives
beginning and ending in a word
that is itself like a vacuum
sucking life from the air
that wraps the earth
and claps its hands
in a tremendous jolt of nothingness
holding the hundred year old wood
taken from an now invisible forest
and built into a schoolhouse
that kindled into shame
the world hiding
another image
failed by the language of now
translated into a hunger
all who can hear must have.

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