A boomer looks back and sees a lot of death and destruction. Looking forward, he wonders if it will ever stop and who will stop it.
It’s a tough one out there, Boomer, but well spoken.
From just another Boomer
"And we will never know how it all turned out, and whether somehow, magically, it all changed after we were gone."
Here is a longish poem I think I've finished recently but may still be working on, which addresses just that.
SOME THINGS I HAVE LEARNED ABOUT THE DEAD
1.
Some of the dead are curious, they will walk for years
through their dark house, asking later arrivals
for news of where it was they have left.
They have capacious memories—they all do, the dead,
but most spend all their unlimited time
sifting through the same cold ashes;
nor do they travel much.
Only a few,
the most curious of the curious,
in order to learn how things were
even before they first saw
the living world’s light,
seek out old neighbors
(rarely their parents)
of similarly curious mind,
who have themselves sought out strangers,
foreigners even; sometimes they learn a language
they never knew, alive; they walk years further
into the dark—time and space are alike
to them—it is slow going in the dark,
and crowded with strangers,
but they continue back and away
and down. They encounter others
like them; they exchange stories, and part. Somewhere
very deep and dark (but light is nothing to them;
why should it be?), and not at all crowded,
an almost-ape receives them:
not too well suited for walking but very curious,
not too well suited for language but still in love
with the stories they bring with the news—all those years of news
of where and who it left, and what became of them all.
2.
I learned this from the dead when I was asleep.
Their house
is not ours (theirs is always dimly lighted), but there are cracks sometimes
in the walls between our houses, cracks between the floorboards
of their parlor above our cellar, in the floorboards
of our kitchen, our living room, our bedroom
above their capacious cellars. Sometimes someone sees someone
through the cracks; sometimes someone speaks.
I learned all of this from the dead, when I was asleep.
It’s a tough one out there, Boomer, but well spoken.
From just another Boomer
"And we will never know how it all turned out, and whether somehow, magically, it all changed after we were gone."
Here is a longish poem I think I've finished recently but may still be working on, which addresses just that.
SOME THINGS I HAVE LEARNED ABOUT THE DEAD
1.
Some of the dead are curious, they will walk for years
through their dark house, asking later arrivals
for news of where it was they have left.
They have capacious memories—they all do, the dead,
but most spend all their unlimited time
sifting through the same cold ashes;
nor do they travel much.
Only a few,
the most curious of the curious,
in order to learn how things were
even before they first saw
the living world’s light,
seek out old neighbors
(rarely their parents)
of similarly curious mind,
who have themselves sought out strangers,
foreigners even; sometimes they learn a language
they never knew, alive; they walk years further
into the dark—time and space are alike
to them—it is slow going in the dark,
and crowded with strangers,
but they continue back and away
and down. They encounter others
like them; they exchange stories, and part. Somewhere
very deep and dark (but light is nothing to them;
why should it be?), and not at all crowded,
an almost-ape receives them:
not too well suited for walking but very curious,
not too well suited for language but still in love
with the stories they bring with the news—all those years of news
of where and who it left, and what became of them all.
2.
I learned this from the dead when I was asleep.
Their house
is not ours (theirs is always dimly lighted), but there are cracks sometimes
in the walls between our houses, cracks between the floorboards
of their parlor above our cellar, in the floorboards
of our kitchen, our living room, our bedroom
above their capacious cellars. Sometimes someone sees someone
through the cracks; sometimes someone speaks.
I learned all of this from the dead, when I was asleep.