mwotw

The Lazarus Problem

If I have bid you “Rise, and make all human haste!” I really must apologize (for such a human waste), then turn a Father’s cheek. I was surprised to find at such accomplished heights (however bright and vanishing) the headway of my Earthly Tribe. It seems but yesterday that I first gave you leave to fly beyond the Garden’s harboring Green. What can it mean when all my favored progeny, and all the very best I’ve sent (to look and seek among the stars), return to me but cindered things? Of course, I wish alive again the very, very best of me, that I might prove a deity deserving of such offerings. But I prefer to re-invent, and make of cinders promises: Another band of reckless men, of singularly cunning sight, must rise and come and try again to find Me in the Night. 09 February, 2003 (For Columbia’s Seven)

May & Can

I know it is the Sun
that shines upon the moon,
and not the gaze of men.
It is too soon
in our Divine Experiment
to think our will (We train our eyes
on every corner of the night.)
the same as lucid sight.

I am capricious to the bone,
the maker of a thing or two
I’d call “of Perfect Kind”,
but own that all the best I’ve made
(the baubles of my pride)
were never those I sought by force,
but those I chanced to find.

16 January, 2003 (For Paul V.)

paul valery | poetry | les saisons

Borderland

Immigration is imperialism
in reverse. They come to us
to be our slaves
and do the dirty work. We give them all
a sense of club, a big idea,
the purity of will
to hate themselves. A foreign thing,
the body can’t digest,
can only die or kill.

poetry