Photo by Marcus Bellamy on Unsplash

 

An epiphany of history: 
The momentary blindness
Of a sunshine daydream;
Of what life could’ve been.

Instead we have
the normal crucifixions:
the splatters of human brains
all over underground trains
and the splatter on the sands
of the desert seer.

In my beginning is my end,
the starting point for music and poetry and art,
the gulags and the camps and massacres came later,
they stretch from Manchester to Lahore to Orlando.

Passing  by the terrible travesties,
of the suras of the Quran or Talmud
from the wailing wall
from place to bloody place,
from time to bloody time.

We need old words, older connections, the oldest ways
to pass this time of thoughtless day;
to solve the sad geographies
of unresolved philosophy and, worse, deadly religion. 

Marcus Aurelius taught us, so-long ago,
not to feel exasperated or defeated or despondent
because our days aren’t packed with wise and moral actions.
But to struggle back up when we fall
and to celebrate behaving like the merely humans
we truly are.

Capable of a courage and an honesty
so far beyond our measly expectations.