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Unsuitable Biography, Written in the Latter Part of the 20th Century

 

Show me a Polaroid of your suffering: a burnt child, a limping dog,
a departure at night, two suitcases, a blue coat. The latter a last
possession of your golden age. Elsewhere, people say, it's worse.
But even this is enough.

A taxi pulls away from the curb. It doesn't matter who's inside.
I forgot to tell you this: nothing matters. Nothing, except skin,
voice, glance. That's not quite true, of course, and I don't believe
it myself but it's August, and behind the saturated green wheat fields

lies a tempting horizon which allows us to rise above the gloomiest
of weather forecasts or biblical floods or snow in Miami and all
end-time predictions, and be happy. Just be happy, for God's sake!
It's never so bad it can't get worse.

No Fear, the shirt says. But then this courage bleeds in the wash
and a horoscope is consulted: Trust your emotions. A romantic
interlude brightens your afternoon. Tacitus tells us about runed
sticks, thrown and read like the migration of birds.

Amphitheaters collapse, and, earlier, the Tower of Babel. In 1902,
Mount Pelee erupts, flattening Martinique's capitol city and killing
all residents, except the city's only prisoner. In that year,
the silk tail, a flashy bird at home in extreme northern latitudes

appeared in mass quantities, fleeing south to escape the arctic winter.
(The history of doom can be written in a language of feathers.)
Three days after the eruption, Jacques, the prisoner, speaks to birds,
confesses the theft, the rape, the murder.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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