(With apologies to Yeats and Mandelbrocht)
*
Turning the tracks of a strange attractor
The butterfly spans the broken vortex;
Change succeeds change; the centre moves away;
The weather is again unstable,
The killing tide floods in, and everywhere
The life breathing wilderness is hewn;
The best lack mass communication, while the worst
Are full of…disinformation.
Surely some science breakthrough is at hand;
Surely the Revolution is at hand.
The Revolution! Hardly are these words out
When a prime time image out of network TV
Distracts my thoughts: somewhere in expedience’s desert
A hungry body with the anger of a man,
A gaze blind and ephemeral as the sun,
Is moving without destination, while all about are
Anguished ghosts of poisoned ants and homeless rotting birds,
The ozone thickens again; but now I know
The twentieth century’s stoned sleep
Is vexed by messiness in love, pain and nature,
And no rough beast, its parents trapped last spring,
Slouches towards anywhere to be born.
Jane Virgo ©
the desert of expedience shall live in my memory now (along with “unyielding hope”)