the power of dreams
against
the dream of power
it was the day
when the cats went out to settle all the fate of the world between themselves
then went back in & tried to tell us
flesh isn’t gendered
only intent
once we all had the same name
now every name is different
“Large figures, dressed in white, were conventional types of divinity, but they bore no signs of personality, and unless they spoke, the question of identity was left open. Even when they did speak, they could not be expected to be direct . . . usually, they gave hints and riddles.”
Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians: in the Mediterranean world from the second century AD to the conversion of Constantine (Penguin, 1988) p 158
Thank those gypsies w/ their tambourines
or no one’ld ever have left their home
floating down out of the mountains
attention to circumstances
will become delicious
shriek & french & italian
– any language but this!
“Als wie ein Ruhetag, so ist des Jahres Ende,
Wie einer Frage Ton, daß dieser sich vollende,
Alsdann erscheint des Frühlings neues Werden,
So glänzet die Natur mit ihrer Pracht auf Erden.”
Hölderlin (signed Scardanelli), “Der Winter”, in ed. Michael Hamburger, Hölderlin (Penguin Books, 1961), p 259
“We ran, silently, from the grey-green pathways of the mountain pass into the quiet, colourless streets of the city. We sought out friends. We had wandered, maddened and goaded, for all our lives it seemed: now to dwell and live and again to build.”
An old couple, tenderly hand in hand, had sung this song.