Lines Against This Realpolitik EnterPrize Nillennium Zeitgeist

by Michael Horovitz

Lines Against This Realpolitik EnterPrize Nillennium Zeitgeist

                         “We have drunk up, demure as at a grace,
                          Pollutions from the brimming cup of wealth;
                         Contemptuous of all honourable rule,
                         Yet bartering freedom and the poor man’s life
                         For gold, as at a market! . . .”
                              (S T Coleridge, ‘Fears in Solitude’, Spring 1798)

If all the Tweets that Web–freaks ever clicked

be some day twittered down

                                           — and out —

by lyrebirds blithely hymning nature’s truths

from deepwise roots and boughs of trees worldwide

reduced to blank screens irreparable

     — futilities of wars outgrown

                                           

— not just for a token pseudo–liberal gesture

or vote–chasing week or month or year

but melodiously concording beak–blent joys

disarming hell–bent hatreds with their silences and noise

once and forever and for all

     — thence might a worthwhile new millennium spring

and Homo Rapiens expire

     — that every breed

of future womankind, mankind

     — old and youngkind

revel in mutual total human–kindness

     — that a truly brave new planet’s friends

join hands and hearts and heads again

to sing and cling

                           — reborn

in hope and strength and decency again

     — and endurance, to cope with pain

and natural death

     — earthlings unanimous:

concerted, immaculate, sane.

Or if not

               . . . What?