Clouds
grow heavy; thunder goes.
Rain drives in from the east, its patter
falls on the sides of the houses. Rain can be destructive,
wiping out boundary marks. But the soil needs care — ecstatic love
has sprouts now, and renunciation. Let the rain feed both.
Only the farmer with intelligence actually brings
his harvest back to his farmyard. He will fill
the granary bins, and feed both the
wise men and the
saints.
lightning
strikes up out of the earth
stunning the air with sound the sun falls
flaming into the sea bright cracks
open in the burning clouds the sky is broken
this is the season of separation crossed
and crossing paths
hevrin khalaf, blessings on her peaceful soul
One torch
can dissipate the
accumulated darkness
of a thousand
aeons.
The grounds
for hope are in the shadows,
in the people who are inventing the world
while no one looks, who themselves don’t know yet
whether they will have any effect, in the people you have
not yet heard of who will be the next Cesar Chavez, the next
Noam Chomsky, the next Cindy Sheehan, or become something
you cannot yet imagine. In this epic struggle between light and dark,
it’s the dark side — that of the anonymous, the unseen, the officially
powerless, the visionaries and subversives in the shadows —
that we must hope for. For those onstage, we can just
hope the curtain comes down soon and the
next act is better, that it comes more
directly from the populist
shadows.
