Monday, November 18, 2013

Greetings

                          The ice was here, the ice was there
                          The ice was all around....

Are you okay?

Are you today

who you are yesterday?

How is it going?

What is it that goes?

What is it that comes?

Who are these words meeting and greeting

one another as if to say no day had passed

no month

no year

no decade

no century

no millennium

no ten thousand years?

Is recognition the essence of repetition?

Or is it as imaginary as poor cruel Coleridge
lying in drugged stupor

vapored in technique

breathng Bibles

with a hard-skinned Chinaman around his neck

trying to untell the story

trying to sell his barbaric door-to-door rhetoric
to characters more ancient than Tin Isles?

Hello, how are you in yellow Xanadu?

Are you okay?

Are you today

who you are yesterday?

Your ancient forests...all lost, all lost

to ringing and to China....

all lost to China.

[E. A. Costa 18 November 2013]

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