Well, the powers that be have enthroned the proverbial tool:
someone clownish enough, and absurd, and sufficiently sinister,
while the rest of us polish the role of obedient fools –
wave the flag for the President, clap for the local Prime Minister!
It is quiet tonight, and the sky is an angry abyss,
separating our dreams from the storm that the present unleashes.
We had hoped, we had dreamed that the world can be better than this…
We were beautiful fools – of the kind I would like to believe in!
There is nothing poetic, nor just, nor idyllic tonight…
There is only the truth - muddy torrents of rain in the distance.
While the powerful broadcast the glory of our demise –
only slightly pathetic – because we are still in existence.
Damn the corporate thugs, raising glasses at pompous events,
their tumors of offshore embarrassment growing unsightly!
Let us gather our foolishness, homeless and hungry, from tents;
from the slums and the provinces, caged in our infinite silence.
We are not idiotic or blind, and we do have a voice!
Maybe we had forgotten, but now is the time to be dauntless -
there was once a September;* a poet who gave us a choice:
if we love, and we must – then we have to be acting upon it…
Diana Stefanova
-------------------------------------------------------
* http://www.poemdujour.com/Sept1.1939.html