The Idiot's Faith
Three lanterns floated in the dream she told him, but
he didn't want to hear about lanterns. He wanted factories unbuilt, windows
smashed open. He wanted libertine wailings. She denied being a builder
of factories, but he knew her reputation. A wind blew in from Montreal,
or she said it was from Montreal, said she could smell the bars of Rue
St Laurent. He was skeptical but didn't want to argue. What good are arguments
on a Saturday night? What good are arguments at all? She told him again
about her love of the French language, and he thought maybe they were getting
somewhere. The modern sunset outside her window was spilled wine tinged
with pollution. They went down the mountain to town, found the trouble
she had decided they wanted. She called a homeless man a fallen Chinese
god, and they mourned his sad descent, forgetting (almost) their own. That
is the power of generosity, one use of our idiot faith in human love.
Humbaba Clothed in Seven Cloaks
Why have you raised up my son Gilgamesh and laid on
him a
restless heart that will not sleep?
Now you push him to go
on a long journey to the place of Humbaba,
to face battle he cannot understand
and travel a road he cannot know…
--Gilgamesh (John Gardner and John Maier translation)
Gilgamesh calls out to us
warns of the unknowable he now knows
and of the battle with Humbaba
we are going to lose.
Humbaba's seven cloaks conceal
his seven attributes.
He takes off one layer and slows,
revealing a further demise.
His face of sickening eels,
his hatred fuller than the ocean.
The blood of his million million victims flows
in his brain as his own.
We will fight Humbaba, like those
before. We will fight, but our hopes
are an empty arsenal.
This is a war we're meant to lose.
The Light Here
It sets a mood
of clownish tragedy,
of ecstatic failure waiting to happen.
It is not a static blue light
nor the throb of a strobe.
It is not a light to read by
nor to be naked in,
unless you are desperate
or barbarously horny.
I would use it to look for you
in a cave or catacomb
or an ossuary crowded by the famous dead--
that is, if you were in such a place,
I would use this light to find you.
It is a light that yellows the periphery.
It is not a light that brightens the center.
It is mixed from an overcast morning
and the electric urban dusk.
It is a light I could live in
if I came to terms with certain failings
in my character
and the character of others.
I know you have light where you are,
better light even,
but I wanted you to know
about the light here.