HOME AND RACE by Eric Rosenbloom copyright 2002 We were nomads, we had seen The soul in which we live And wandered far and long. Its end was never found, Our knowledge of it growing With our wanderings in its time and space. The same soul of rocks and trees, Animals of earth and sky and river, Ocean, lake, and the fire inside us. The fire of our restless thoughts Burned the soul from within And forged for us a life of shame. Guilt followed in every footstep, Walked beside and soon Led the way before us. Hungry, we would kill — Destroy a part of our life, A needle of pain inside our heads. One evening, shivering From nature’s fickle wrath, The rain thundering around us, One man said this soul Is as large as our travels — Let it be small in our settlement. A ditch and a wall would mark the bounds Of a new world, outside the painful life Become alien to our clumsy tread. Ours to feed on, to drink, to mine, To herd and hunt and enslave To enrich the soul of our new world. Cut off from life, we are free To kill what mocks the stillness On which we build, house upon house. We mark our streets with banners Of our settled god and hang his charms To guard the doorway from his enemy. An island of civilization, The human soul defying the oceans Of unordered primitive matter. Beasts to our developed mind, The world squats before us, offering Its riches useless to itself. Its very life depends on ours It serves and is sacrificed, Mute to our unargued glory. Yet devils it sends to turn us In horror from our deeds, recalling Reptilian sympathy for the soulless. In night’s advantage they haunt The shadows and wait for weakness To weave their web in sleeping minds. Like memories they take the shapes Of our own lives, body and senses, Our own words in diabolic imitation. Our own propagation betrays us — In the suspended moment we join That ocean outside our walls, That massed web of inhuman life, The life without us, that lives us In the soul beyond our light. We wake to curse the dark moment, Push it away, wash our eyes, Return to the work of oblivion. |