Time of Tyranny, 49

Lyn Hejinian - 1941-

We live in toppled times under a feat of tyranny; let's not
fake getting lost, let's do it, let's not do it intermittently, let's be
lost, disoriented and never to be bound so all can hear
the hiss of the adverbs we shoot into tyrants' eyes, quivering
shafts slippery from limbs and aimed by eyes under feathered
lids. Our features are like stale bread, my headache bad
as a blueprint for butter. Windows: how stupidly the intensity
of glass returns to us the terror of love. Things diverge, separate
like the forks of the Eel River to which the competing lies
of two tyrants are but split stones shaken by earthquakes
of stupefying times, of minutes through a glorious forest, of women
who are personal friends, the flanks of a prevented rabbit: to scatter
and ambiguate, obviate, surreptitiously
flesh and hurry to find things to recombine.

To achieve reality (where objects thrive on people's passions), enormous effort and continuous social interactions are required, and I can't get started without you. Not here—over there's a better place to begin a funny story. History with its dead all shot through with regularities in the woods and following what looks like a cow-path is part of a creature's sexual magic. Its recorded words now are just a small memento meant to trigger memories which will give us energy when the right time comes. Every afternoon high in a tree the forest vagabond naps while time hangs like a swarm of midges, trembling on. It might be female but it has a phallus's tendency to jump up. How lonely it is to think that I can only think what I think even while he is thinking—our thinking just our respective working body's hum. And while the warlords of Mycenae were storming Troy the foundations of their own societies were crumbling, too.

A dream, still clinging like light to the dark, rounding The gap left by things which have already happened Leaving nothing in their place, may have nothing to do But that. Dreams are like ghosts achieving ghosts' perennial goal Of revoking the sensation of repose. It's terrible To think we write these things for them, to tell them Of our life—that is, our whole life. Along comes a dream Of a machine. Why? What is being sold there? How is the product emitted? It must have been sparked by a noise, the way the very word "spark" emits a brief picture. Is it original? Inevitable? We seem to sleep so as to draw the picture Of events that have already happened so we can picture Them. A dream for example of a procession to an execution site. How many strangers could circle the space while speaking of nostalgia And of wolves in the hills? We find them Thinking of nothing instead—there's no one to impersonate, nothing To foresee. It's logical that prophesies would be emitted Through the gaps left by previous things, or by the dead Refusing conversation and contemplating beauty instead. But isn’t that the problem with beauty—that it's apt in retrospect To seem preordained? The dawn birds are trilling A new day—it has the psychical quality of "pastness" and they are trailing It. The day breaks in an imperfectly continuous course Of life. Sleep is immediate and memory nothing.

Poems

Time of Tyranny, 49

More by Lyn Hejinian

The Future (audio only)

The Book of a Thousand Eyes [To achieve reality]

The Book of a Thousand Eyes [A dream, still clinging like light to the dark, rounding]

poets.org

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Poems

Time of Tyranny, 49

The Future (audio only)

The Book of a Thousand Eyes [To achieve reality]

The Book of a Thousand Eyes [A dream, still clinging like light to the dark, rounding]

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poets.org

academy of american poets

national poetry month

american poets