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For Those to Come
Where is the world
that we used to know?
Where is the one pure being?
Where are the millions unknown
who will always be unknown,
the millions alone
who will always be alone.
the millions who will die
and be forgotten,
the infinite unborn?
IS THERE NOTHING WE CAN DO?
Where is our science?
Where are the thinkers?
Where are the doers?
Where is Gunga Din now?
You are right, Li Po,
only the great drinkers are left,
only the inebriate souls
who come down from the mountain
once in a decade
to gaze at the mess
they have not quite forgotten,
to drink from the stream
that has lost its voice
and its clarity.
Only the well-decorated children
in soap operas
now decide our fate
already written in the early morning
before ten o'clock — Oh God!
Give me the real time,
give me the luscious imaginary scenarios
of an age
I might have been born in
if I had been lucky
if I had known the proper hours
or the skeletons
in my late night wanderings.
If only I had known you
in a previous life
staggering around
in the Montparnasse Cemetery
looking for the tomb
of the Poet,
looking for the final presentation.
Looking for the last Olympics
of your eyes.
Waiting for one more blast
from the horn of plenty.
You have not yet begun
to know Homeric principles,
you have not yet touched
all the fine music
that fills my shoes with laughter.
You have not yet begun
to see me with my branches
and my leaves
and the occasional blossom
sprouting from beneath
my awkward feet.
I await your strange presence
I await your final analysis,
I sing as I stand
in the shadow
of your ghostly logic;
I will never devour you.
We will sing together
and cover the latitudes
like a colony of petrels,
and never stop.
We will know our childhood
for the first time,
we will dance upon the graves
of all our dead heroes
and tell them finally to get lost.
We will press the buttons
that will take us to another
planet
where music is a way of life.
We will take ourselves to the outer rings
and beyond,
and paint something dramatic.
Oh Beauty! Give us this moment
to be another animal
within another place
with EYES!
and see YOU once again
as the perfect parent
YOU might have been.
Oh Beauty! Take me once more
to the far places of the soul.
You will comfort me
I know
in the wine blossom
cherry-crushing universe
of eternal becoming
the universe of hummingbirds
and dreams and honey.
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