Overheard in the heat, the air, the fruit fly’ s drone
of the perfect helix, overheard in science’ s repartee
of right and wrong, in the gossip of perfumed women
basking in London’ s charmless sun,
Overheard in the gasps of penny sideshows, the formulas
of doctors summing up freaks in taxidermic clinics,
Overheard in the echo of cubic hallways,
in the speculum’ s wand first tested on the slave woman,
Overheard in history’ s senile tympanum
was a Song.
Rain irrigating fact, jars mapping name,
Recollect my throat, my organs, my bones