“In the Dark Times will there also be singing?
Yes, there will be singing about the Dark Times”
–Bertolt Brecht (1939)
holy tenderness at spooky distance
recalcitrant world looks up
the word chaos in Chaldean
meant “without a library”
intersecting your oikos
pleas of a household, green ethics
attractor oracles, exile metabolism
wisdom of centuries, charnel ground
“earthshine” a glow on the moon
not fully lit but quaking the land
poet lineage resounds through
heart-empire, through symbiosis
in our Trouble Time
marvels of living fibers
magical books, initiations
don’t break, ever: Blake, Rimbaud
Lorca, a web of life, of
but hold, hold troubadour
a stylus a notebook we our own cabal
it’s now or never our climate battle
purple shoes masks
packet of hand sanitizer
you hand me as we part
stepping up to pandemic
tasks — a rasp, a tune, power so close
from a distant galaxy bon courage
as inhabitants of the city
leave for the wilderness to save the wildness
movement a sinewy shamanic
restlessness
forces of eye & art
ear’s transcendence to our century
carved out
of purgatory where we’ve been where
we’ve gone where we will be next ?
in struggle
ride me your river to touch future’s
rapturous day
Jesse Paris Smith photo