LAMENTATIONS

by David Eide

The citizens, muffled by their possessions, pass silently by the poet who stands under the eaves of a monstrous building. That is the thousandth time and he knows they have had existences before, in those epochs when possession was a meager lot. Something in the mind must remember when the meagerness had driven a deep humiliation into the innocent and saw their aspirations swept from them by the possessors.

One by one they pass him without a hint they know the future. Even in his poor state he realizes that the future will be rich and abundant with the souls of great men and women.

Of late, in a leisurely fashion, the poet has reflected on the polarities of liberation and repression. The possessions represent to him a repression that no one dare admit to. Chafed by their repression the oppressed are gleeful at the power of judgment that comes over them when they pass a man who has no possessions.

Oh world, whose desires are more indomitable than all the books he reads on anti-materialism. Heroic desire arise and play themselves out swiftly before collapsing into the onslaught of the worlds rage.

Fire does not possess the man who is carried through his life on the graceless things.

"Crazy poet," he says to himself. "They do not want you or your gifts. They are sick and dying." Oh, what a painful thought! A thought that moves the mind to think of travel. Road of the true implications!

Later in the evening he laughs at his pessimism. So, this is a prelude and I am the fool for expecting the people to act like characters or thoughts that I have read in books. Very well, tomorrow I will look at them again, one by one, and allow them to speak to tell me what it is that they love about possessions."

The city vanishes upward into the clouds of its pessimism and the spirits of people empty out where the wolves claim the deer in the yellow pasture and stray thoughts go through an army marching south to explore regions unknown.

But, he discovers, the people are wonderful. They are who they want to be and laugh at the judgements they suffer. They teach the poet. "And all the time, " he explains to them, " I thought you wanted to kill me for imagining the worst about you. Ah well, I am here to learn, to learn and to write pleasing nonsense."