September 28, 2006

It’s hard to watch
the deterioration … on the other hand,
there is the shear
heroism
of it as the poisons take their toll
puckering skin and,
now in new ways: the bloody nose,
the tiredness, the constant runny nose.

a monstering horror swallows this unworld
and this is not the story
of history nor, for that matter, salvation …
by flood, fire or blood.

Hold fast to those things that shall endure
writes the psalmist. And so
what are those things? Shall we return
to the devout / or the misanthropic to come to know them?:
As for me, / I’d rather be a worm
in a wild apple than a son of man! The worm
has no love, but only the taste for acidic-sweet
and the rot of the compost. Like the worm in the pile
I’ve read through the Misanthropic Moods
and find no glory in them, misanthropy has
a troubling ease of self-fullness. It is not
the things that last that one has an insatiable
taste for, but the fiery things that turn
to dust, that Lot’s wife craved for, skin
and the firmness of bone in the cleft beneath
the chin, the softness of the flesh in the
concavity of the underside of the shoulder,
things touched and remembered, the aroma
of the May rose. Good-bye is the Amen
that turns life to knee-felt prayer. The Why
is locked into the doodles of imperfection
and arrhythmias of the primordial genome project at its source:
we live despite the war and pain, and find
angels and laughter
squat in every quarter. But thank you for these
creatures that give up their substance to heal
the humans that do love despite it all.