EPILOGUE: Our "Modern Age"
click each image to read the Closing Stanza for that period of human history ... |
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Part One: Pre-History
Stanza 111
Liberation soon will come, Semeuse.
Siddhartha's calm and Zarathustra's strides
Rose from Primordial Sea to distant views,
So we’re receptive to the shifting tides
And Wanshee cries: "Here Christian soldiers came
With greed to claw and chew a ‘New World,’ fear
Repeating ‘Old World’ crimes; again their name
Was Ignorance, insipid, cruel. But hear,
Red folk! We’re fortified with wrath, with fight,
For we have known a Way. They brought the Blacks
In death-ships’ chains to slave." (Hurabo's night . . .)
"Then Harriet Tubman came, and drums and backs
Unbreakable though nights of Auschwitz loom
And Hiroshima, universal gloom.”
Part Two: Early "Civilizations"
Stanza 112
Knowledge could not be suppressed. Einstein saw
Into both atom and the universe,
The double edge; we will no longer draw
A line that marks off Us from Them. Reverse
The ancient challenge; deal with our own fear:
Who has the love to touch and heal Neurod?
He holds a button where was once a spear.
Hiroshima, Nagasaki . . . Whose God,
Plutonium? "Ahimsa," Gandhi pleads,
Love balancing the scale of Faust's desire.
We’ll either join the dance, or fall to needs
Of Neurod, plunging into ice and fire!
Our dark form that was frozen must return;
Released, the power can either heal or burn.
Part Three: Greece
Stanza 113
"Poor paranoids, your needs controlled us all,"
Sings Bahdowils, “but watch ‘needs’ pass. New day.
Fear held our creativity in thrall.
Now life-in-ice recall: We came the Arctic way.
Watch!” Certainties of outgrown creeds crash, fall,
Crushed by a quantum jump in consciousness;
No clue, its coming. Sudden, here for all,
Ideas exploding, neither more nor less
Than evolution, Arzen’s revolution
Realized. “I wish I’d stayed,” Hurabo
Comes in wind, his voice in rustling leaves; “shunned
Death for love, Semeuse, your seeds to sow,
For now I see: Nay-saying masks wear thin.
Say ‘Yes’ to life again. Say ‘Yes!’ Again!”
Part Four: Rome, Joshua of Nazareth,
the "Dark Ages"
Stanza 114
Semeuse lies in the morning cool (this dawn will bleed)
And, breathing deeply, waits upon the surge
Of life, the sprouting of her strongest seed.
She'll let go, giving of herself, the urge
To live and let live overcoming pain
Such as men will never know. She'll breathe, push,
Reassure: "Come forth, our precious child. Both rain
And sun await you. Love will save you. Shhhh."
Resistance falls. Semeuse has won for us.
Her baby draws, receives, reflects Fire's light.
We gather round, we sing and dance, and thus
Pass on the spark of Bahdowils, the might:
"We love but do not own those seeds we sow,
For all love is in part a letting go."
Part Five: A Renaissance
Stanza 115
"Rest now your weary heads, mother and child.
Rest for your first night under moonlit sky,
Rest covered by a quilt of stars so mild
And gentle in their touch . . . and I will die.
From sea to land to tree we came for you
Then risked the dangers backon land ─ hear me ─
So you could walk, be free. Sleep and renew;
My particles will soon rejoin the sea.
The innocent who's lying at your breast,
A guardian of life and death, will grow
To roam the hills and valleys of our quest.
Now sleep, my children, dream; my passing know:
The door is opened wide from whence we came;
Our first songs and our last, they are the same."
Epilogue: Our "Modern Age"
Stanza 116
A silence absolute and stillness be.
We are at first a pulse beat, nothing more,
Drawn forth, immersed (old ocean mystery),
No pleasure, pain, reluctance, then we soar
Up through ascending beats, slowly at first
Then faster. Where have we been? Let’s dare
Though wondering: “Who are we? Will we burst
From this acceleration?” No! Look there.
I see our life as from a limb above,
Both light and shadow on crisp leaves, a child
At peace among the trees with all who love
Our climbing, swinging; all who’re reconciled.
Come, run and dance and with our doe we'll play.
Run faster, hand in hand. We're on our way!
• The End •