"To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile"
May you be filled with loving-kindness..
May you have all the food you need,
plus some extra tucked away
in the apocalypse pantry.
“The Wave,” W.T. Horton, 1898
Poem (I lived in the first century of these wars)
by Muriel Rukeyser
I lived in the first century of world wars.
Most mornings I would be more or less insane,
The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,
The news would pour out of various devices
Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen.
I would call my friends on other devices;
They would be more or less mad for similar reasons.
Slowly I would get to pen and paper,
Make my poems for others unseen and unborn.
In the day I would be reminded of those men and women,
Brave, setting up signals across vast distances,
Considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values.
As the lights darkened, as the lights of night brightened,
We would try to imagine them, try to find each other,
To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile
Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each other,
Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by any means
To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves,
To let go the means, to wake.
I lived in the first century of these wars.
Muriel Rukeyser, “Poem” from The Speed of Darkness (Vintage Books, 1968)
«< Watch this poem animated as art and read by Deborah Paredez »>
Creative Invitations
1
You’ve undergone a metamorphosis in your sleep. What animal / vegetable / mineral / unknown do you wake up as? What do you want to eat, how do you want to move, what do you want to do in? Explore on paper or with your body.
2
A lot has changed in the last 100 years, eh? Start writing with Muriel Rukeyser’s line as a prompt: “I lived in the first century of…”