Lamentation

painting by sandro botticelli.

Lamentation

“If it were possible to cure evils by lamentation, or to raise

the dead with tears, then gold would be less valuable than

weeping.”--Sophocles.

Do birds at first light call you Lenny,

or do you demand that they warble Leonard,

          as sleep must be combed out of your tangled curls,

          as the uniqueness of your finger whorls

                     tap out another hit tune, craft words, and

                     rustle up raw uninhibited rhythms, just as

          the night birds fade, & the birds of dawn

          on their wire, in their way, entreat you to

let go of those dark dream harpies,

to allow the healing light of a new day to

          teach you how to dance

          butt-naked in the Now?

Why is it that the first thing you always hear are the crisis criers,

           the media whores & TV News hosts telling you, yet again

                   that somewhere on this shrunken earth, the hideous

                             hounds of war have devoured,

                                                             murdered,

                                                             butchered,

                                                             imprisoned,

                                                             exploded &

                                                             attacked the innocent;

                                                             too damn many teddy bears

                                                    beheaded, feet still wearing shoes

                                                torn from legs, tiny pink fingers piling

                                          up like bloody boned sausages, & festive

                                   sidewalk cafe caesar salads sizzle with C-4 & 

                              glops of terrorist’s entrails, because the holy dove

                       is plucked clean, featherless, shackled. captured, then

             set free, only to be caught again--never ever to soar for more

than a timid instant on its broken wings. 

Dear God, these bloody sins            occur         on your holy day

as cathedral bells chime out             across       the battlements,

but Lord, even they are digital           now,         as the great clappers

                                

                               in the shining stone towers are not 

                               clanging any more, as the behemoth

                               silver bells hang flaccid & useless,

                               heralding nothing, just as golden

                               mosques come alive, their loud

                                speakers extolling: Allah Akbar, 

                                & you can’t help but wonder which

                                face God wears when he hears the news?

You groan & moan that your time

of dissent is all but spent during

those turbulent decades when it

was you who carried the signs,

skipped over all the land mines

& faced SWAT steel bayonets, fire

hoses, terrible tasers & rubber bullets--always so sure that someone

                                                              would hear, & care, & change,

                                                              not just rearrange the sainted

                                                              structures of political power;

not just busting skulls with oak

batons, gassing the crowds into

tears, hopes into fears, transforming

marches into melees                             as the drums of peace are stilled,

                                                                   the chants for freedom are killed,

                                                              as the ballads became ballistic & every

                                                                   note of love attained refugee status,

                                                              as rifles rearranged the beat, & sirens

                                                                   screamed the new red refrains.

So nothing to do but sit on the floor, sipping strong coffee & smoking

Camels while frantically strumming your weeping guitar, letting the 

charnel churn of emotion be redirected into poetry, lyrics, & magnificent

music, finding freedom within your own tenderness, thrusting it with

love out of your open window, out into the terrible world, where it will

sail beautifully on the winds of fire but for a planetary moment, before

dropping unnoticed into a superfluous heap beneath the deep bronze

cracks in the old bells of liberty that peal no more.

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets Pub Poetics

Written as a response to Leonard Cohen's ANTHEM, where 

There is a crack in everything;

That's how the light gets in.