Thursday, November 10, 2016

Kit Kelen #315 - what a wonderful world it could


315
what a wonderful world it could be
(morning after, 10.11.16)

after Kipling


I didn't think I had it in me

but I wept for you, America
for the world and for myself

I wondered if...
if we'd worked more
if only I'd dreamed harder
forced heart and nerve and sinew

if I'd flossed more
brushed more vigorously
if I had been more patient
focused, firm
if I could pray
and keep my head
if I could've...

forgive us all this hour
and not give way to hating

hold on!
to what (?), one asks

we who having hoped
are now all cast down

watch the things we gave
our lives to broken
taken back

I speak to no one
but myself
it's taken till now
to see it
see truth

having been lied about
what is more precious?

there was a moment
we might have inhabited

I swallow hard on it
bite back

there was a moment of 'we'
now there is a vanishing

I wept for you, America
for the world and for myself

I didn't think I had it in me

it gnaws at me
how has this happened?

the moment – where was it?

historic – this is what it means
later they'll ask
where were you when...?

and where was the moment spent?
turns out we were playing with ourselves
all along

we with our better world thoughts
we with our planet to save

how is it I feel responsible?
how is it I feel guilt?
feel shame?

turns out we'd made it worse
by speaking

there was no contest of ideas
there was no bettering to get

we had no one we could become
should I have never breathed a word?

and I'm not even one of them
how do I even get to care?

I didn't think I had it in me

but I wept for you, America
for the world and for myself

it's all world historic
the Republic comes to an end
in Triumphs
in more circuses than were before

when you're a kid you can look up to evil
Caligula, Nero, Hitler and now

and now I see the past for the pit
we've climbed up from
and where we fall

history
a trap for fools

if only
if only I'd done more
if I could have spoken with crowds
kept virtue yet

I must compose myself now
start again at my beginnings

hold on!

the world-fuck wave comes over us now
one planet united in grief

I have to trust myself again

if I fix my eyes on a line
clouds drift through
clouds drift by

I steady
the unforgiving minute

I fix my eyes
I fix the line
make this my art

I can be the window
perhaps no one will see through me
perhaps
and I must wait

there's still a green world out there
there's still some air to breathe

and while I breathe I witness
is all there's left to me
to do

the all-to-do
I dedicate
this life to you

there must be a story
this must be a journey
there must be democracy under it all
the every creature worldwide kind

that's the only way I can make it make sense
it's the only way to explain

this is the news
I tell 







5 comments:

  1. Well put - 'the pit of history'. I'm feeling the same...

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  2. Love the Whitmanesque energy, 'one planet united in grief'?

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  3. The sense of not communicating effectively is palpable... An overweening confidence in the power of words?

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  4. not relly sure what you mean Katherine

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  5. makes me feel such despair. I need to walk in the garden and concentrate on colours, shapes and perfumed flowers. I don't know...

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