The Singing Season

Of Eden And Apep

'And God said
Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only, for only
The wind will listen.'
- T S Eliot,  'Ash Wednesday'

Purveyors of miseries,
allies in emnities,
would stuff ballot boxes
with knee jerk reactions,
crooked crosses nailed to papers,
folded in despair,
that uncivil war might tear
la terre,
atrocities cities,
that Mosul come to run
in all our theaters
till kingdom come,
post nuclear,
of cockroach and bacteria.

Gusts of wintry wind
within the haven of this writing place,
weathered table laden
with sea-stone paperweights, say so

and yet
until a bomb blast downs
these apple trees,
who could not help but smile
as foolish pigeon pecks and peeps
over the parapet of the feeder

and how behind her each waving flag
of each petal of each apple-blossom
proclaims, in ancient patents, domesticity.

While there are eyes to see,
the flight of a bumble bee
matters more
than macho mach-one boom of war.

I think the vengeful
have not tasted fruit enough:
either they do not know how far
it is they've fallen or
they need to fold and fall far more
and curl into a ball
in the knowledge
of good and evil
and narrow go
through needle's eye
to sew the flesh together they have torn
and sew the flesh that was so torn from them
and know it as the same flesh grown
on the same tree.

There is a worm in that fruit,
in that flesh,
wants to take down the sun,
a migraine worm, shimmering
zigzag in his trenches,
presses behind the eyes
pulls the trigger

What would you be doing with houris,
when rape is all you know?
What would you be doing in heaven,
when hell is all you've made?

What would you make of Europe
but wall it with depravity,
more imperial denial,
slide us to barbarity.

Daesh and the Cochon crowd*, both,
tail gagging head biting tail,
would roll us down the road to sieg-heil hell,
ablative armor strapped
against trap-door IED spiders. Stop.

Oh stop and grieve. Pink cherry petals blow
about the roads and body in the gutter.
It is spring. It's April.  Put hope in
all the barrels of your election, France,
that autumn might cider and liqueur.

.........................

*I mean Le Pen and the other Fascists.

Apep is the serpent being who attempts to down the boat of the sun each dawn and sunset and thus bring an end to the order of the world. Set, in the prow of Ra's boat fends it off with a spear. 

The form is free as
'...voices are,
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.'
- T S Eliot 'The Hollow Men'