Sergio Ortiz

If I could catch up
with the rhythm of things
I´d stop talking
and sink into a deep
historical silence—
poetry of the dead.

Ghosts and gyres,
sages and tyrants,
expressions of longing
for a lost world.
The misplaced shoes
of a gassed girl.

Silence studies
the unregarded floor,
the effect of Sarin
on our lungs,
the involuntary
twitching of the legs.

Yet we must dig
deeper into earth
to find the epiphany
of these actions.
Perhaps the temple
was a defective construction.

Or “Nothing” is more
than an absence
whose advent is to be welcomed.
“Nothing,” a furiously
crossed-out “Something,”
Absence, whiteness, silence.