in 1989 you walk the main road to
Tiananmen when the inexplicable
hits an impossible current pushes
jolts nearly folds you over you can’t
take another step paralyzed hands
on knees almost unable to breathe
an invisible storm spectral wind drives you
back you stumble sit down never reach
Tiananmen months later hours after the
slaughter in the Square a lone man stares
down a tank the tank tacks the man
pivots blocking its path and it’s not
until it’s repeated on virtually every
screen that you see it the road where
the man stops the tank is the same
road same spot where you couldn’t walk
on no logic no insight no voice within
tells can tell will ever explain what realm
you arrived in each day each
life astonishes us or can
uncanny anomalous enigmatic
our ignorance infinite knowledge finite and
yet the dead all those dead
trampled by tanks in the nightmare city square
is this then what tyrants burn to beat
down obliterate but cannot can never
kill uncertainty mystery the unknown.
