For Elizabeth Dagenhart

when the stars like claws
  and the night sky like someone else's secrecy
  and the city lights like false nature
  conspire to make beauty
when yesterday's pages of armed robbery
  and last night's phonecall of attempted rape
  and this closed car's best attempt
  to pollute planet earth to death
conspire to invent safety
  we know we're home

they come up on us like hydrophobia
  panhandlers turned muggers
  hunters turned predators
  hustlers turned rapists
your sense of safety like a dead bird in the gutter
no sophisticated victim

welcome home city of god
  remade with rapist's smile
         robber's claws
         murderer's scent for news
welcome   home
  that won't last
  without collapsing
that blesses us
  with our own blood
    only at certain points in our histories

from The Troubles (1993)