Planet of the Blind

You have to be quick
To catch Uncle History
At his desk
It’s not really
His desk—
Think of it
As a plank
After a shipwreck
Or the whole world
Of a glowworm
Or the needle
Of Jefferson’s barometer
The tongue
Of an orphan’s shoe
The blade
Of a ceiling fan
In the abattoir
In the end
It down’s matter
What you think
Because of course
He’s been there
And gone
But there’s a chill
And a scent of roses
Yeats thought he knew
What this meant

Uncle History doesn’t notice the seasons
They’re all the same
It’s as if he lives inside a mountain
His eyes are like pin points
He’s a creature of the dark
Words of the scribes
Sink to his lair
His scribes, his scarabs
Tickle tickle
Here comes some more bad news
In fairness, and given
The Illud tempus
Good news can happen
But only the earth reports it
The earth with its slow hands

If I could tell you I’d let you know
Says Auntie H—she loves Auden
Who was himself a kind of avatar
Of feminine tragedy
Tricked out as History
She loves it also
When he says
“The boys are whooping in up on the moon”
As in, “take that Walter Cronkite”
She thinks how they should always send
Poets and musicians into space
Keats on the moon!
Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite…

Uncle History is comparatively young
Say he’s 25,000 years old
Maybe more like 6,000
No one knows for sure
And certainly Uncle doesn’t
He’s like one of those dogs
Who turns up at a farm
Tail wagging
But he can’t tell you
Where he’s been
Sure he can talk
But its not much help
There’s a wind
With locusts
When he tries to speak
He equates weather
With sadness
Sees ice on the pond
As an illness
On a face

Sometimes you have to give your lunch to someone you don’t know.
Or leave a book you love
On a bus seat just because
These are the true moments
You don’t need to believe in god
You don’t even have to love anyone
In every case you will be lighter
Capiche?

Uncle History Gives a Speech

We were wrong about everything
But not about the thieves
For they were better than us
They lurked at our doorways
They snuck into our songs—
He knows when you’ve been sleeping…
We knew them from day one
Way back in Mesopotamia
They stole the very first shoes
Which were made of plant fibers
And so from the beginning
They knew how
To eat the evidence
Yes we were wrong about everything
But look as you walk the streets
At all the people
With shoes in their guts

Uncle History can wiggle his ears
Which is a great trick
Except he’s never invited
To children’s parties
He performs for sheep
Out in the meadow
By moonlight
Uncle does his thing
But the flock
Understands that other trick
For the wolf
Wiggles his ears also

You can’t always pretend you’re fully alive
Uncle History says—he’s talking
To a squirrel—living between life and death
Is exhausting, I know you know
When he talks to animals
He feels closest to himself
But not in a Lord Tennyson
Rum-ti-tum way
More like he’s asking
For editing advice
As he writes a suicide note
“Come on out here
And stand in the rain with me”
Says a Norway rat
‘You have to keep living
In order to suffer
From the opposite
Of your intentions”
“In general,” Uncle thinks
“It is humbling
To be stymied by a rat”

Uncle History can’t get this this thing to work
This Schopenhauer thing
This Adorno gizmo
The problem is his guts
He has disbiosis—can’t
Keep things down
Hamlet had it too
Of course the world
Is driven by unfeeling will
And tippy toe
Conformist culture
Knows what gets you off
He knows everything
And wears a serape
Of negative dialectics
Yes I do yes I do
He says
Talking to his parakeet