Russian Accordion

O the accordion of a municipal bus!

your insides

are expanding with our silence which

we take from our apartments to factories and offices

and take it from work back home

and from home to hospitals and from hospitals to groceries.

Silence is not golden.

it’s paper money

that’s worth less than the paper. Inflation!

O inflation

we are all of us millionaires, and it costs

us nothing now to

keep

our mouths shut.

Inside this old and dusty accordion of a public bus

we are the musical notes

too rotten

for a hymn.

Silence is our national currency

thousand pink tongues pay

for one little injustice.

Our silence lives under the mattresses in bookcases

between

pages of books deposited

as bodyfat

in our fingers and cheeks.

The bus driver

puts his index finger to his oily lips.

This bus, this Russian accordion of a bus, where is it

speeding us to

clutching its engine, flapping

its doors

while an occasional spark flies up, it

is as if gunsmith

is playing an instrument of our bodies

about which

we say not a thing.