[Newspoetry] Totem and Shadow

[William Gillespie]

Totem And Shadow

    In Thicket Portage,
    near the Arctic Circle,

    the ground is frozen
    all year long. White-

    haired men drive white
    buses across blue tundra.

    The world, meanwhile,
    is useful and social,

    a weightless space
    consisting of triumph,

    waste, and desire,
    which of course is

    history, the dream
    without the tangle.

    Flocked like houses
    in the squall of being,

    events are dressed for
    mourning everywhere we are.

    Moralists at the boundary
    of flesh and being,

    we watch each generation
    fold back into itself

    like an urgent letter
    that's finally never sent.

    Covered with a snow
    tainted and actual,

    though not in fact real,
    the concept of history

    survives as a totem.
    Cartoon graphics and

    the Lascaux caves
    emerge as the old.

    We circle their shards
    in the postmodern town,

    our saliva and semen
    dangerous as machines.

    A hawkmoth drifts
    toward a wintry aviary.

    A width of crows
    sways in thistles.

    The world as act
    is nimble as a shadow,

    but we haven't
    even the language

    to speak its name.
    Because the TV's on,

    we can only watch intently
    as the word bruise

    darkens and the word
    light brightens.

    This is the way it is,
    the present seems to argue:

    a group of smiling firemen
    posing in front of the fire,

    an apocalypse so boring
    its sequel is in planning.


-Paul Hoover