The People Who Pass By
      Oxford, March 21, 2003

They flow around us, our vigil a stone
in their stream, where High and Cornmarket
meet under an ancient clock.

One by one we mostly can’t be heard
protesting the bombs, falling now
on Iraq. It’s six PM, the light

lasting longer. Speakers’ heads like horses’
shy away from the microphone.
I lean in to hear them say, we must

not kill. Students in turbans, gauze
tunics wafting, lean in too,
as each quarter hour drowns

a voice. Mechanical soldiers, Romans
freshly painted, hammer out the time.
And teenagers crouch on a doorstep, strumming

as if this were a festival. The river of people
surges on, accustomed to vigils, guitars,
mallets, and bells. What are they all doing

that’s so important? Eating a bap.
Swinging a bag of fuchsia tissue paper
from the Oasis, some boutique.

Pulling a trolley of odds and ends
perhaps to give the Oxfam shop. Or there,
leaning against the wall of that bakery,

breathing in. Shifting a headscarf to cover
an errant tendril, or tilting a daughter’s
pram up and over the curb,

apologizing, laughing, getting along,
quenching, lifting us, tumbling our edges—
the source, the wellspring, our unvoiced song.