in the ruins
Mark Conway
we drank in the remains
of ruined buildings
and we sat in a cave or
wrecked houses on farms given back to the bank
listening to men who'd been raised
in ways that were lost
and we strained to make out
the use of their news
they were crazy or passed out
speed notched with a cross
they drank from the flask and the mouth
they came in and shook off the rain
inflamed and dismayed
calm and arcane
the least one seethed chanting whitman for hours
then wept at the dregs of the fire
foam formed at the edge of their lips
we drank and waited for something to drop
you and I looking and sifting
for signs written in wax
we were young we knew how to die
but not how to last
a small man who claimed he was blake raged
all night and probably he was
he had god in his sights
white crosses shone in our eyes or acid mandalic
in the ruins the men talked:
seraphic and broken
glowing with gnosis and rubbish
we sorted their mad sacred words
these dog-headed guides to the life after
and the life after that
For the first time ever, and I really mean ever, I am adrift in the melancholic sea of nostalgia. While I work, I usually listen to alternative music, but today I listened to an oldies station, and Journey's song Lights/City by the Bay came on, and the lyric, When the lights go down in the city grabbed me by the arm and pulled me back to 1978. For the rest of the afternoon I've been on the blue side. I don't remember anything specific about that year in association with this song, but Steve Perry's voice triggered something. Perhaps it's part of my journey back to myself in which once facet is letting go. I have no idea what I'm still holding on to from that time.
My entry into Conway's poem is as a dialogue with the past, finding a key to the meaning and import of events and experience, in the way that each generation holds the key to the lock box of their particular modality of understanding.
For example: on the way to work this morning I was listening to NPR about the latest update on the disaster in Japan, and one of the interviews was with a few people of the WWII generation from China. Initially I was surprised that a lot of the comments were angry or disparaging, and that many felt little sympathy, until the reporter put the comments in context to the Japanese occupation of Nanking, (to give a bit of perspective, years ago I read an account in which a Nazi general complained about the Japaneses atrocities inflicted on Chinese civilian).
We are creatures of our past lives. I remember having breakfast years ago with one of my father's friends and the man launched into a diatribe against the "japs". I suppose decades from now the older generation will still be railing against Muslim terrorists, regardless who is the enemy du jour.
Perhaps the starkest reality one faces in this life is that learning from the past is almost impossible, because we forget the past, other than our own experience, so quickly.
I love the final image of Cerberus leading the dead to the life after and the life after that. Each of us lead so many lives in this one lifetime. Why shouldn't we have an "after that" once death plucks us?
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