5/17/2020 Black Matters by Keith S.

Wilson | Poetry Foundation

Black Matters

BY K E I T H S . W I L S O N

after D.H. Lawrence

shall i tell you, then, that we exist?

there came a light, blue and white careening.
the police like wailing angels
to bitter me.

and so this:
dark matter is hypothetical. know
that it cannot be seen

in the gunpowder of a flower,

in a worm that raisins on the concrete,
in a man that wills himself not to speak.

gags, oh gags.
for a shadow cannot breathe.
it deprives them of nothing. pride

is born in the black and then dies in it.

i hear our shadow, low treble
of the clasping of our hands.

dark matter is invisible.

we infer it: how light bends around a black body,
and still you do not see black halos, even here,

my having told you plainly where they are.

Keith S Wilson, "Black Matters" from Fieldnotes on Ordinary Love. Copyright © 2019 by Keith S Wilson.

Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/152736/black-matters?mc_cid=428f6287a3&mc_eid=90f984bd3e 1/2