Edwin Starr - War (King Britt Mix) mp3

Yusef Komunyakaa

"You and I Are Disappearing"

- Bjöm Håkansson

The cry I bring down from the hills
belongs to a girl still burning
inside my head. At daybreak
she burns like a piece of paper.
She burns like foxfire
in a thigh-shaped valley.
A skirt of flames
dances around her
at dusk.
We stand with our hands
hanging at our sides,
while she burns
like a sack of dry ice.
She burns like oil on water.
She burns like a cattail torch
dipped in gasoline.
She glows like the fat tip
of a banker's cigar,
silent as quicksilver.
A tiger under a rainbow
at nightfall.
She burns like a shot glass of vodka.
She burns like a field of poppies
at the edge of a rain forest.
She rises like dragonsmoke
to my nostrils.
She burns like a burning bush
driven by a godawful wind.

-Yusef Komunyakaa, Dien Cai Dau, Hanover 1988, p. 17]


Edwin Starr

Edwin Starr - War (King Britt Mix) (mp3), from Motown Remixed, out today.