THE PESSIMISTS
These pessimists are always talking about death.
Death to the lazy bull
who cowers instead of charging.
Death to all those survivors of atomic bombs
who remember so hard.
Death to the 9th International Congress of Poets
because the 8th was so anti-everything.
A double death to all those
who believe they won't die.
A single death to all those
who believe they will.
I'm sick to death of pessimists
and always keep a wary eye on the optimists.
That's me - enthusiastically depressed.
Concerned, braced for anything,
I stand and ask everyone I meet -
What do you think will happen?
They never have a clue.
When it happens, it'll happen
is all they say.
I notch the wall.
Another day and still no answers.
I have to stick to who I am.
So many battles to fight all at once.
So many nights camped on the edge of chaos,
the dead streaming over the field calling out,
crying for water, for help,
for dreams, for death and more death
and the end of this war
and the beginning of another.
For me the blood never dries.
The cries never dissipate.
II
Growing up in the land
of silver buttons
and bright, big screens,
of terrible events tempered with calm
and monkeys running everywhere,
the sad earth just pulls and pulls
until the strain, discontent and moody,
snaps me off into the land I never
seem to want to be.
And I go, passively, intently,
saying it must be my destiny,
or because my father didn't break his heart
pounding steel into shape for nothing.
I go beat the whirlwind
and watch the birds from the highland fly.
Drinking deeply the national geography
I become drunk with the suddenness of it all.
I listen as
my country sings a song that confronts
but does not comfort.
I watch as
my country imprisons its passion
and condemns me to solace.
In my stupor
I bleed as I sit among the men
with harsh, untreated wounds
and become one of their kind,
bloodied by fear and shot full of despair,
in constant need of a scalpel
and a sword.