BRUCE SMITH
Occurs when the light from an object is shifted toward the red
end of the spectrum: an increase in wavelength, a decrease
in frequency. And I saw the white horse in the fields
of central New York become at sunset a fiery red, light
from an object shifted and its rider was given power to take peace
from the earth and to him was given the tools of shock and awe,
and the power to break the seals as light from the objects shifted,
and the oil wells burned on the day of shock and awe. Redshift:
Guernica, April 1937. Redshift: Hiroshima, 1945,
when I was born in a dilation of time as the wavelength lengthened
and the creature said, “Come and see.” And I heard, redshift,
Lord Amherst say give the blankets with the smallpox to the Indians,
redshift, and let the corpses dead of the plague be flung over the wall
by a catapult, redshift, and the Assyrians corrupt the wells and Hannibal
fill the water jars with vipers. Shock and awe. My life is chemical
time and the moon turns a blood red, light shifts, skin blisters,
time dilates, the liver swells with toxins, and the sky rolls up like a scroll,
redshift, in shock and awe and I write on my skin on the red end
of the spectrum as my nation flings the corpses over the wall
and endows the spores that turn the skin to coal. And the sun
turns black like a sackcloth made of goat hair as the oil wells burn.
In Unit 731 the Imperial Army makes racial bacteria as I catapult
over the walls and the vector of my life is a vesper mouse,
and the target is my skin. And in the fields of central New York
I saw a riderless horse, a fiery red one.
