KS Culbreth

The Voice of Terrible News

“How do you know? How can you be so sure?” she said.
and I know though I cannot find the word, or have found it
in another language I cannot speak but hear in the sound
of a breeze through a curtain
in a room in Bath, and of the cars
passing in the dusk
beyond the tree-lined walk,
of the football and rugby players
in the quad of public playing fields
of the city with the last full circus
on the hill across the narrow bridge,
and the sound of a voice
far away now, soft and far
over the phone,
through the long thin line
that makes a type of presence where there would be none,
the sweet soft broken voice of terrible news
and the sound of turmoiled breathing.
“How do you know? How can you be so sure?” she said.
because she will not go to London
as I had daydreamed
and because in the high soft nervous
voice of terrible news,
of a sudden break without farewell,
there was the slightest quiver of crying, and softly over
the long phone wire
a link, timeless, interminable
as the triumphal song of truce
amid the enveloping bloodfest
that distance has let loose,
with the sound of a mild January breeze
through the window of the bed and breakfast,
a stranger even abandoned
did not feel alone.