Is this the beginning of the end
after all? Hell-bound,
slip-sliding on power & money
& lies,
our nations’ mad charioteers
career after the old horsemen aroused
from their uneasy sleep, eager
to mow & slice & erupt in blood
from land to land.
Contagion of savage pointless deaths,
those small wars like inkblots on a map,
their edges bleeding out, flowing together
into one great redblack pool, meniscus
slick with death.
Here in my garden, spring comes late,
yellow & blue;
the small birds flutter & pipe, nest-foraging
in slow green.
It is pleasant here
but it is not an island.
Am I just to stay here & wait?
,
*The title is borrowed from Berlioz’s opera, The Damnation of Faust.
reubenwoolley 