And what had we decided? Oh,
a great number of things – this was
the problem, this out-stretching
of our wills past time and the very skin
that should keep us well-enough
informed of ideas like limits.
If only we had not evolved past
the days of ideas: action
was what mattered, everything
else just cloud and waiting, and we
were done with waiting.
Some ideas hung around like ghosts
or model homes, unsubstantial things
that we assumed were real or else
were always this light and fragile.
One was revolution. Another was
justice. We wore them like the robes
of kings we had never seen except
in great myths and we sung their
liturgies as if we knew exactly
what we meant but at the end of the day
only our throats were sore: the blood
was still threading the course of our
bodies, the bones were yet intact,
and our homes shown like lacquered
paper, glowing warm and incandescent.
Nothing was lost except for what we
had not lost. And that, too, was gone.
Tomorrow we will be angry – or how
could we remain so few seconds before
every exhalation? We will pretend to live
in brighter days where ideas enfleshed
the spare forests we will devastate
in our quiet studies and we will call
our imagination passion, and later,
the most important attempt of all.
And in a magnificent frenzy of every
tension scraping its plate with every
other brittle mockup of emotion
we will strive and yearn and finally
beneath the stars we still see through
our own putrefaction we will climax
and fall asleep.
