OUT OF THE FABLE ENDLESSLY WEEPING
after Walt Whitman
Out of the fable endlessly weeping
Out of the machines that always break down
Out of the ground gouged, torn and earth-quaked wantonly
The people pretend
They believe in god, want only
What’s right — and step on the weak to mount their creed …
Why not? The poor you have with you always,
They do not matter.
Matter does not matter
To the thieves raiding the fable
For slogans and lies to seduce the intemperate many
Who can’t understand they can’t be the One
(Simple math of endless greed, oldest math there is)
But who can be recruited
To rape, plunder, torture, and kill
Since the energy of their bodies trapped so long in a “soul”
(But a word to fatten tyrants’ scorn)
Explodes as it must, the world in its wake,
Children in shreds of limbs and brains and infant organs
Earth will never experience the wonders of,
The Einstein or the Newton or the Curie or the Gandhi
Now under shovels
Furiously clanging, splattering
Blood and dirt for the incoming pit-full.
No birds for the boy, he-birds or she-birds, in their nest,
Watching their eggs, so carefully watching,
The boy, who wasn’t like other boys …
Loved Lincoln,
And wept when the man, as good probably as a man can be
(Which at best is middlin’ good),
Died in the swarm of race and hatred
No old-testament plague
Remotely so violent, merciless, and nasty.
Let the boy who loved a place once called America
Speak to you if you want to learn to sing,
Sing of yourself ...
But be careful —
You must contain multitudes and dare, yes, dare,
To imagine a dream.
Oh, do you feel the dare in the dream?
The dream at the dare?
The wonder that was exploration beyond the limits cynicism pitched?
The moon and Pluto and the deep-sea thermal vents?
The black hole at the center of our Milky Way?
The Genome mapped and the diseases cured?
The aspiration, the human dreaming, to contain,
Yes, contain, multitudes?
For which they will scorn you and queer you
(Chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter)
And kill all the birds that ever flew or nested or fledged their young
Out of the cradle endlessly rocking.