The Winds Of November
I do not fear the time. S. D.
The beat of deeper truth pounds on daily, though
the darkening world dislikes percussion.
Hearts beat. Clocks tock. Cats purr.
These facts cannot be faked, like orgasms or attack ads.
The words of the world keep the tempo,
drumming insistently: I am, I was, I shall be.
They may proclaim the end of history,
but it has a few more things to say.
Small miracles announce themselves every day.
The leaves of fall. The buds of spring.
Geese fleeing south. Rude, returning robins.
A world exists beneath politics and noise
maintained in being by ineluctable rhythms.
Incidental atrocities cannot break that line.
It will continue when our current woes
have decayed into myths and legends,
like those of vanished Rome and Troy,
nowhere near as final as we imagine,
compost for unborn, fertile minds,
with new tunes to play, new things to say.
The love and lives
of the human heart;
after every fall,
a fresh, new start.
