Lights in the West
I have no wish now to write about Egypt, in general, but I do feel fully justified in mentioning what I have learned about the Nile
by accurate investigation in many quarters. It clearly has its source on Mount Atlas...
toward the west, close to the ocean itself, and it towers above all other mountains,
for which reason the poets have called it the pillar of the sky
(Dio's History of Rome)
This world is a natural place. It is a streetcornerwhere boy meets girl, the bed of experience,
a garden of dreams. Foundation under their ideals.
Under lampposts under whose flickering lights
their eyes they find meaning in an imperceptible nod
toward agreement. I will come with you. Yes.
Have never seen one alive;
One'll take a lamb, it's said,
at night from its sheep mother's side.
That quick; In my headlights
there he is now, flat and fried
onto asphalt midway 'cross the lane.
Me? I'm passing through;
Do you live here?
Live--What do you mean?
What does anyone mean?
In a motel, off the highway,
in the middle of the desert,
Lovers exchange cigarettes.
Then they blow smoke. Their eyes reflect
The neon tips of their cigarettes.
The eyes are windows. This too is a place
where truckers at first light leave for long hauls
over mountains, into cities,
fast toward the suburbs
of flawless wives and their pedestrian children.
Everyone is going someplace.
("8 Eastern, 9 Central, Tuesday,
Stay tuned for Wild
Life Tonight:
Elephants eat under baobab trees.
The elephants eat the baobab trees.
They wait to be shredded.
They are going nowhere."
Flickering cathode-ray
pulls into a tight
sphincter of light--
now, go to bed, kids.
Things to do all day.)
Hotel etiquette, lucid martinis
before bedtime.
Luminescence bounces off sequins.
She waits at the bar.
Got a light?
Me? I'm passing through;
Do you live here?
Waterland killer orca circles
to entertain tourists
who kill time. Brooding night
Comes and their young depart
for the streetlamps and wait.
Coyotes in the desert
Mourning a loss. I have heard
their nightcry in my own bed.
I witnessed their reasons
for lament under shifting stars on a clear night
when highbeams miles of emptiness reflect
in radiant eyes startled
by oncoming death. I have been to that place.
Been. But I'm back.
But I have no wish,
now, to write of it, in general.
Put out that cigarette.
Come back to bed.
What are you reading?
Both of them wait for me
and call me to them.
Wherever you've been,
It's there that you are.
Me? I'm passing through.
Big deal.
Just passing through to where I've been.
(In Dio's time the sun rose in our West and set upon the East;
the earth moved perfect concentric in reverse without an axis tilt
'til Nemesis passed (its orbit, jubilee). This too again shall pass.
Then all the people of the earth will rise and walk to take
new homes, to claim new lands; the Babel will be great
in that last century before the next we call the "first".
There are two ways of knowing everything. Two ways at least.
There's black or white, truth or dream, the way it was and is.)
--John Horvath
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