Planet of the Blind

Uncle history spreads tales
Across two tables
It’s the incitement
For stories
That he likes
Alexander
The horse whisperer
Tames Bucephalus
And rides that horse
To the ends
Of the earth
Mostly the past
Is about dreams
And animals
And of course
Aristotle
Who said philosophy
Can make men sick

During a rough patch
Aunt history
Left her husband
And went to Carthage
To see her parents
Dido and Acerbus
This was before
They were killed by fire
It was a good time—
Pygmalion
Visited
And gave out
Silver toothpicks—
(The ivory girl
Yet to come)
There was laughter
In the manner
Of demi-gods
A mechanical sound
Tin birds colliding
“Well” she thought,
“At least History laughs
Like a man”
When she got home
She found History
Could also weep

I dreamt of Charles Olson
And a persimmon tree
There was fog
And there were ships
In a wide channel
It was autumn
The poet placed
A poor man’s apple
In my hand

Mushrooms come early
With a wet spring
One might call it late winter
Aunt History knits a blanket
She’s decided
To be optimistic
Someone unknown
Will need warmth
And though
She can’t sing
She sings:
“When future
Falls down
The well
Hey nonny”
She recalls
Wisława Szymborska:
“When I pronounce the word Future,
The first syllable
Already belongs to the past.”
At least
The blanket’s
Outside of time
She thinks
She thinks
“Penelope knew…”

No one can fool Uncle History
Better than history
So who better to call on
Than Herodotus
“Of all men’s miseries
The bitterest is this:
To know so much
And to have control over nothing.”
It’s funny really
Facts and floods
Happenstance
And horror
No one driving the car
This seems right—
Aunt History knows better
There’s pain at the center
Of everything
Facts can’t be ignored
Which is
Restraint itself

Aunt history remembers an old joke
About Stalin—the tyrant
Slips disguised from the Kremlin
Goes to a dive bar
Sits next to a common man
He leans close, says:
“So, what do you think
Of comrade Stalin?”
The man
Makes a crook
Of his finger
“Follow me…”
In silence
They exit the place
After much walking
They end up
In a darkened alley
No one is around
No one at all
And the common man says:
“I like him!”
Its the perfect knee slapper
If you’ve known fear

Uncle history is all worn out
What with running like a rat—
He’d rather
Be a simple villager
Coming out of church
Conversing about the sermon
Sniffing the autumn air
The stalks of the potato plants
Rotting fast…
Oh to be anyone
But he’s the monolith
Of what has occurred
Beneath a sliver of light
Just before nothing comes

The anger that breaks men into boys
Also turns them back
To men—such violence isn’t easy
Uncle history is forced
To watch
This wretched story
First as tragedy
Then as cataclysm
Nothing can stop it
The men and boys
Have such ill humor
(“Born that way”)
Some escape
But their numbers
Are small
So small
Its like a vaudeville joke—
How small is it?
The good men and boys
Might fill
One railway car
But they always miss the train



Aunt history has a knock-down
Drag-out fight with her husband
Who’s complacency
Has gotten under her nerves
The man lugs around
Tragedies
But he can’t see
The perfect flowers
Like Rousseau
Who fainted
In an English garden
(And as if that wasn’t enough
His dog loved him)
So they fight about
What consciousness is for
She loves Einstein:
“No problem can be solved
From the same level
Of consciousness that created it…”
He on the other hand
Thinks of Shostakovich:
“When a man is in despair,
It means
That he still believes in something…”
But uncle history
Doesn’t believe it…

“Let’s begin with a sonnet”
Says Aunt history—
“But it must be about light
The beautiful light
That shines
Through a woman’s hair
Or the light
That surrounded Orpheus
As he climbed
A sonnet of perfect rhymes
A poem that allows for tears
Let’s she says, include
The lovely and unlikely
Dropped things
The key found in the street…”