These are great poems.
Frederick Pollack <[log in to unmask]> wrote: The Seas of Europa
The rock below repeatedly erupts,
warms, sometimes kills –
an absolute. The ice sky
cracks, also kills
before it reseals: another.
If the blobs knew
the cause (the gravity
of Jupiter), then Jupiter would be
an absolute, but less so,
and so on, up through
the universe. Instead they ask
Why is there anything at all, and Why
consciousness. Blind in our wavelengths,
they see well enough
to sense the answer (pain),
and won’t be surprised at the rain
arriving with our sensors and our drills.
The Birth of Tragedy
Originally a chorus chanted
accusations of vanity, threats
of divine arbitrariness or justice,
to a crowd vain as peacocks,
rational in a hectic
improvised way, and superstitious as thieves.
Then a member of the chorus
stepped forth. Hadn’t known,
a moment before, that he would.
Moaned the same sort of thing
he had sung – he had
been boastful, neglectful
of sacrifices, even
(within the uncertain
parameters of the concept) cruel. But he spoke –
entranced, pressured,
sweating under the mask – of himself, his own faults.
But *was he speaking of himself?
Or of all of them, chorus and crowd, as if they were he?
Uncertain, his former colleagues
kept up a nervous humming
(the principles of No dead air-time
and Pretend to follow the script predate
media). The audience,
also unsure
if the madman’s “I” meant “I”
or “we” or “you,” and where he got off
doing that – the audience,
about to storm the stage
and tear him apart (but wouldn’t that
itself involve a possibly wrong
initiative?), didn’t.
The thing became
part of the ritual. Eventually the chorus
was fired. Yet the actor
is still out there, historically despised,
suspect, safe only in slapstick,
a stand-in for ourselves
like ourselves. And the gods,
in a merged, corporate form,
like the typical insurance company
that takes and takes and never gives, still preside.
I’ve said it all before, through clenched teeth.
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