A+Brave+and+Startling+Truth+(1995)

=A Brave And Startling Truth = We, this people on a small and lonely planet Traveling through causal space Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns To a destination where all signs tell us It is possible and imperative that we discover A brave and startling truth And when we come to it To the day of peacemaking When we realease our fingers From fists of hostility And alow the pure air to cool our palms When we come to it When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean When battlefields and coliseum No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters Up with the bruised and bloody grass To lie in identical plots in foreign lands When the rapacious storming of churches The screaming racket in the temples have ceased When the pennants are waving gaily When the banners of the world tramble Stoutly in the good, clean breeze When we come to it When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders And children dress their dolls in flags of truce When land mines of death have been removed And the aged may walk into evenings of peace When religious ritual is not perfumed By the incense of burning flesh And childhood dreams are not kicked awake By nightmares of abuse When we come to it Then we will confess that not the Pyramids With their stones set in mysterious perfection Not the Garden of Babylon Hanging as eternal beauty In our collective memory Not the Grand Canyon Kindled in delicious color By Western sunsets Not the Danube flowing in its blue soul into Europe Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji Stretching to the rising sun Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mssissippi who, without favor, Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores These are not the only wonders of the world When we come to it We, this people, on this miniscule and kithless globe Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade, the dagger Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace We, this people on this mote of matter In whose mouths abide cantankerous words Which challenge our existance Yet out of those same mouths Can come songs of such exquisite sweetness That the heart falters in its labor And the body is quieted into awe We, this people, on this small and drifting planet Whose hands can strike with such abandon That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness That the haughty neck is happy to bow And the proud back is glad to bend Out of such chaos, of such contradiction We learn that we are neither devils or divines When we come to it We, this people, on this wayward, floating body Created on this earth, of this earth Have the power to fashion for this earth A climate where every man and every woman Can live freely without sanctimonious piety And without crippling fear When we come to it We must confess that we are the possible We are the miraculous, the true wonders of this world That is when, and only when We come to it.

Poems