Brilliant Survivors Of The Dark World Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Little boys run in blue shirts
And black shorts on brown walls,
Of rooms of missing girls
In New Jersey
I want you to come on a run with me
To Africa,
Where the animals can talk
With Alice’s primitive ancestors,
Even though she is dying
Of stage four cancer
With her daughter in Vermont;
Old people in newspaper houses
In the subway,
Come upside on Christmas Day
To sell things
For show and tell
In the elementary school of Bavaria
Where girls hide dolls in nests
With silver chalices and mirrors
Rocking in the wind,
Towers above the land where
Wolves are circling,
Circling all they control,
Their tongues lulling in
The armies of the moon surround
The outlines of men of chalk,
In forensic work books
The bright girls can finish early
And leave for home
Skipping through the springy trees,
Reciting Latin to the woodsmen,
They are eclipses in the night,
Brilliant survivors of the dark work.