Current Events and a Chorus (with clip/reading)








Current Events and a Chorus


there should have been
visible to my naked eye
a total eclipse of the moon
on Tuesday at midnight
but an electrical storm
came between us
there should have been
visible from the British Isles
a total eclipse of the sun
on August 28 1184 BC
but that is all I know and
perhaps
all I shall never know

imprinted with the seal of the West
is a tradition with a past but no future
passionate full of turmoil and conflicts
having all this aesthetic distance yet
not lacking the ethos of the warrior or
the bathos of the victim of independence

it has taken me by storm
a polished tradition more startling
than any heretofore unexplored
unresolved internal romantic struggle

than the unresolvable struggles
of the eternally romantic
unresolvable is fine
irresolvable sounds awkwardly
American

imprinted with the seal of the West
is a tradition with a past but no future
passionate full of turmoil and conflicts
having all this aesthetic distance yet
not lacking the ethos of the warrior or
the bathos of this victim of independence