If You Take Down the Bricks

by Yaacov Dovid Shulman

If you take down the bricks of this flying tower one by one,
These bricks with which so many have been stoned,
These brickbats of thoughts concealed in windy towers,
These towers on sandy plains
Where princesses with great coils of hair cried,
Where princes climbed the narrow bridges of their tresses,
Where the kites of their imaginings whirled out of control in the sky,
Where the sun shone on the jerboa, who was hustling home with the news
Of new food to his mewling children,
Who writhed in the darkness like naked fingers,
Who basked in each others’ warmth and moistness.
The moistness in my bones causes my flesh to melt,
It causes the room to melt, that man with the pasty face
And my thoughts and my eyes and my ears and my shoes
And the whiteness behind the whiteness
And all the niggling boxes of my words
And the little cages where discontented gerbils mutter grievously.
Change just one eyeball every week,
One ear, one conscience, one brainpan,
One kneecap, one set of veins on the back of your hand,
Your children are sleeping in their warm small imaginations
And they seek the feel of your new limbs.