Friday Poem: "Poem of Rationalization"

Poem of Rationalization

Those who have not been murdered
by fascists
May yet get their turn

Time glides in its icy way
Toward a future much like the past
Until we find ourselves
Where others were 

Among those who murder

I rise in the morning
After an uncomfortable night
And tend to my needs

In the compartment of beginning
There is at first no room for others
So I do not know
The day’s body count
The unexpected news
The genuine surprises of October
Or of any day

Only after I have practiced
My ritual self-preservation
Do I revisit my guilt
More populous than loneliness
Less bearable
More shrill

How neatly we bifurcate our lives
Between our daily self-absorption
And our conscience

In children this is excusable
But we are not children
Though many among us
Are simple as children
But more fearful of light than dark

Truly I await in a powerless trance
The unfolding of horror
The touch of evil

I do my very small bit
As supplement to self-preservation

Secretly I deem it worthless

To feel without power
Is to be without power

The powerful have the confidence of money
Dark secrecy machines that kill
They practice the wizardry of fear
With laws that worship lawlessness
A swarm of lackeys garbed as acolytes
Form the vanguard of their fame
They know no shame

Had I nothing
I might risk everything
But I am too comfortable
To be reckless

I look to the dispossessed
To whom I paid no heed
To save me

To tear down the walls
To bring order out of disorder
Purpose out of despair

America
I seek a flag
That neither weeps nor bleeds

I await the uprising
My impotence prevents

You others whom I have ignored
Had I but made time for you
In the beginning
Ere day sank into dusk
And night began licking its lips

If only

10/20-10/26/06

Copyright 2006 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission