Elsewhere

They'll say you are wrong

to think of it as war

when what you saw was

only flailing, half illumined in the flares.

They'll point to problems with the light,

say you cannot trust

the conjuring habit of the hands and eyes

that appear to belie stories of the day.

Under the swinging bulb as figures come and go

the face close to your face

will say the trains now run again,

factories increase

their output, bodies even glisten

on the beach again.

Then later they'll say yes, admittedly our city's

emptied of your friends and colleagues

and the pumps run dry at times, and yes

that was dark smoke

massed above the mall last Saturday.

But how much more ridiculous

you'd seem, huddled on the ice, elsewhere entirely,

with a new name, a fake accent,

clutching photographs that prove or disprove nothing.

And is there not a thrill in knowing that the footage

some will queue to see

is from a neighborhood like yours?

In the sirens and the flags, the beat of helicopter rotors,

the corner men in camouflage?

And you perhaps among the black cars

racing bumper to bumper at dawn

toward the palace?

Source: In a Language That You Know (University of Nebraska Press, 2017)