creeping out in the sunlight
like we all do nowadays
birdsong & glitters
unplanned under clear sky
hidden safe then
from Satan’s Watch Fiends
what the gods are we can tell
– breathe on the mirror & let
us appear
“Everything tends towards catastrophe, & collapse
I am interested, geared-up and happy”
Winston Churchill, August 28, 1914, quoted in Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (Penguin, 2013), p 201 (citing Hew Strachan, The First World War [Oxford, 2001), p 103)
We die, we are born
& in between
scrabble about a bit
oh this stormy weather as the year begins
great things might come over or
yet another upwelling of that shit-filled water
mongrel warnings now:
true Anglo-Saxons born
already hyphenate
– our new native land
scraped clear then washed
bare rock corroded only by sunlight & rain
will welcome all immigrants
– come spread your fertile filth!
life upswinging here joyous as kitsch
largeness & laughing
noisy by nature
curiously lovable
who wouldn’t want
not worship
but welcome
i Im Arme der Götter wuchs ich groß.
ii Einig zu sein, ist göttlich und gut; woher ist die Sucht denn
Unter den menschen, daß nur Einer und Eines nur sei?
iii Liebt die Götter und denkt freundlich der Sterblichen!
Haßt den Rausch, wie den Frost! Lehrt und beschreibet nicht!
Wenn der Meister euch ängstigt,
Fragt die große Natur am Rat.
Hölderlin, op. cit, “Hyperions Schicksalslied”, p 27, “Fünf Epigramme: Wurzel alles Übels”, p 36, “An die jungen Dichter”, p 19
a hank of hair is a little picking bird
– see it fly away now