Remembering and Forgetting

You remember, don't you?

...


'When the forests have been destroyed their darkness remains'.

The song the whale sings, away from the world, heavy as lead, a single, extended note, the bell-gold of the sea, deep in thought.

~

Do you remember the hours, the days, even for a while? The days that have passed and passed between us? All the great intellects today teach us to forget.

The old forgotten language is all we have to remind us of all we've forgotten; and it can't be said, this tremendous draining away of words and worlds, of styles of thinking, modes of being. The habits of the heart, the habitat that grounded us. This old way of speaking found only in dusty books now. An image, then, in this late, flashing hour. The last man, here, without any names.

It is imperative to get the timing right, the shy experts said, once upon a time. Holed up in their bunkers, or snug in the silent high-rooms of the world, with their calculus of pleasure and pain. We will "reduce this nation to a nomadic people." Deep down settlers have always hated the settled. Burn down the mosques, the babies, the olive trees, too. Freedom's just a word.

And now the fires burn everywhere and the ghosts come back to haunt the living. Scorched earth is a policy, a goal. The American woodsman (Calasso)-and we're all American now. Except i ain't. 

If this is man, then I ain't man enough.