i wrote this almost two years ago, and forgot about it until last month; i don’t think it’s entirely done, but it felt worth putting here today. it’s built off of brecht’s “An die Nachgeborenen”, auden’s “September 1, 1939”, and rukeyser’s “Poem (I lived in the first century of world wars)”.
signals across vast distances (the second century)
in three parts
III.
you up there, who observed the flood
in which we declined to perish,
consider
when you speak of our stubbornness
also the dark times
you arranged to avoid.
for we went out, frequently changing our appearance, bodies, shoes,
through the class warfare, knowing
there was injustice and you were outraged at home.
and yet we knew:
a passive distaste for squalor
distorts the heart.
dissent without action
is the same as support. we
who you denied everything but a kind regard
know how to be gentle with each other.
but you, when at last the time comes
that you cannot survive alone,
do you expect us to be anything
but your enemies?
[8]
can this voice
unfold the lie
the romantic lie
of everyday senses
and of authorities
groping skies and asses?
there is no such thing as the state
and no one exists alone.
it is a choice to let one hunger or another
turn you into a cop, a guard, a soldier, a man.
loving one another is all that saves us.
in the end, we die.
—--
careless stories
products to the unseen
and unborn
to let go to wake
a nameless way of living
almost unimagined values
as the lights of night brighten