LAMENTATIONS

by David Eide

Energies, fly! Break apart all this naturalness that surrounds the innermost feeling. Convert them on a moments notice to the known and the unknown.

What makes the sound of the magical hum of the fleeing one? She has been tasted more than once by the desiring imagination; her wings are clipped by some miscreant sibling who struggles to succeed the father to power. Don't they, today, in the hills that carry winds down to the tired valleys play with forgetful delight?

They are chased away by the old man in the hut who has a nasty voice and may have a gun. A gun! One of them yells with delight.

And in the valley there is the scent of money. They sprinkle magic on the money that is passing hands from the client to the lawyer or the agent and her customer. They will dream tonight of everything that their exchange did not accomplish and wake up restless as though life is empty but for the impressions of their own lives.

The laughter that comes fifteen angles out of the center of running water has frightened him with terrible implications dancing out to meet the rabbits in the tree hollow.

There were no notices in the paper to tell of the death of a man who he knew from childhood. He felt the general run of humanity laugh at his pain. "Do not support these old memories," they seem to say. Something deep within them has died he realizes and, for a moment, he feels deep shame for a world and its lost soul.

Mind; past, future. Light on the happy activity of the people! Will it matter what strange world surrounds the people one thousand years from now? They will break the hypnotism of things that oppress them and see the light of the poet streaking above them, headed a thousand years further.

What hammer will be heard at that time? What trails will cross the unhurried landscape? What signal and image will flash from unsuspecting nodes in the time to come?

Blessed Earth more real than my abstractions!

The poet, too sophisticated to kiss the ground, sits in his hovel peering at a map tacked on his walls and speculates about the nature of things, things moving onward by the pressure of the turning globe. The Earth, turning by the pressure of the migrating people open now to the possibilities of creating things new.

Flow to the four that have passed, flow to the four to come.

Women running freely on the island of Chios

Men marching, hanging with fatigue, shouting out encouragement along the rocky coast of the troubled country.

A tale-teller on a rock overlooking the well-travelled road thinking more elaborate strands to his singular tale.

Murderous intent turned into general mayhem; the repressed rampaging through the library to burn the representation of what burdens them.

Love-making in the shallow boat under the cover of skins.

A moon that burns a hole in the heart of a philosopher.

He sees them in an instant and feels compassion for the life that has been lived and experienced. Compassion and great love that the being took its chances and dreamed its dreams.

Lost love cracks through the open sky and is absorbed by the striking vacuum of space. Well, he laughs at his own enthusiasm, and goes to bed.