Dark Days Ahead

Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.
Robert Zimmerman

Wordsworth commended us to seek understanding and strength in nature (what’s left of it). At the same time, I try to remember the retreating nature of individual artists: Chekhov’s laughter (referred to by Gogol as the most refined sound he ever heard), Glenn Gould, as a young child, practicing Bach in the summer heat (a countryman of mine), Stephen Spender circulating among admirers (after a reading, an exquisite old man going from stranger to stranger conversing at length), Degas’ pastel of dancers glowing in the dark (the very girls looking at them as if in a mirror at the d’Orsay), or Dylan’s ancient, nimble fingers all along the harmonica in a huge darkened arena at the height of ‘Masters of War’ (the battle raging in Iraq and Vietnam). Our beloved Shakespeare mouthing, “How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, whose action is no stronger than a flower?” (a commissioned poet writing for his keep). Further back, a scarred Michelangelo muttering, “If they knew what this cost me, they might not admire it so much” (commanded by the Medicis). When was it Moses was labouring to bring the tablets down for the chosen few? Art changing nothing and a soul leaving the planet every second never to return; the desert religions on fire once again from East Texas to Jerusalem. And now Greece gone the way of Atlantis: frail skeletons rattling on barren hills. These are the Final Days, this is the Darkness, this is the Flood.

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This is a sweeping prose poem that dips in and out of our history from a certain elevated vantage point.