Waking Up the World

It is a strange time, he said to me.
No one can ques­tion that.
Dai­ly life goes on,
but against a frac­tured background.
Trust is naive, would­n’t you say?
And our imag­ined, much laud­ed future
for a long time’s been lit­tle more
than a bro­ken puzzle.
Prob­lems have mount­ed, would­n’t you say?
A pile of fire­wood just wait­ing for a match?
Mean­while, thankfully,
our great­est mys­tery, the carousel
one day start­ed turn­ing backwards
and the cal­liope kept drowning
itself in its own gar­bled song,
and when we looked into them
the mir­rors found for us
ter­rif­ic belief and a fabulous,
rid­er­less dark horse that might save us
as we rode in cir­cles, grasp­ing his mane.
Indeed, in such a world no one
is tru­ly safe or sound, don’t you think,
and we are tired, but not too tired to fight.
Would­n’t you say it’s the others,
their des­per­ate denials and illusions
that have become our fond­est beds?
Why should those oth­er refugees
get all the atten­tion? What about
the rest of us, don’t you think?
I promise, all too soon
the anx­i­ety will find you out, too.
Don’t you see how even now
some­one may be com­ing to shoot at us?
Thank­ful­ly, we have our rights to violence
and here we are, as if in a dream,
though the carousel retreats beneath us into space.
We, the mar­tyrs, are always des­tined to
fall and shat­ter like glass,
unknown, poor us, on the acid sea.

Isn’t this what your ter­ror­ists have done? he proposed.
Dri­ven us out of fact, shriv­elled us away
from any­thing at all to count on?
Rise then your patri­ot­ic ban­ner and shout –
for that is all that will pro­tect you.
Look askance at those dif­fer­ent than yourself.
Hope to have more mon­ey and anoth­er loaded gun
by the end of the year. Play this lot­tery, won’t you?.
Keep your head down and teach your children
to chant their prayers in darkness,
con­demn­ing the ene­my because
it’s tru­ly not our fault.

At that, he turned to me and asked –
with­out a trace of bit­ter­ness at all –
Don’t you think it’s time to finally
wake up this world?

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