Once before the nation was split like wolf-packs
Fighting over a bloody carcass.
Wars and corruption was all the news
And everybody grew their hair long.
And what did all the tumult bring?
As all we wanted was to laugh again
Like the children we were then;
The roaring years of drugs and fun,
And roller-skating to a sonic drum.
Hope’s a homeless animal on the streets of now
In history’s dialectic of psychotic despair-
Everything’s impossibly different
And yet the same chaos governs all things.
Tell me what the future brings.
Who would dare!
What will be known of us ancient ones,
Dancing like the dervishes
As the planet melts and air becomes thick.
We are each part of it, we all take our share.
Each of us, alone, spinning in the past
To find a home for hope at last.
Comments
A lot of people our age,
who remember the 60s and more are feeling despair and remembering hope.
Good poem, I feel a bit stretched for rhyme in places
thanks Jess
I've been experimenting with mixing up blank verse with rhymes. Trying to vary the pace of the reading. Did you find this a distraction?
yes, I guess that's what caused my comment.
I usually do the same but it feels natural to me, not like experimenting.
Maybe close your eyes and just let it flow.
I do that a lot. What comes is often bizarre with heaps of typos but I often find the germ of a poem in it.
Thanks Alan
I guess I favored the alliteration. I had spinning, then whirling but chose dancing to use the idea of what the dervishes are doing with a more common act, without the religious connotation.
It’s interesting how Auden still occupies the landscape, this poem is so influenced by his poem about 1939... thanks for your reading.
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