Anniversary Approaches

[Steelhead]

Poesy is not my natural province. But I do have my favorites there, too,
among them Richard Hugo, Louise Gluck, Gregory Corso, Frank O'Hara, John
Ashbury, James Wright and Charles Wright.  Near the top of the list,
however, is the greatest (published) Eskimo poet:  Galway Kinnell.  Here's
a poem of his which has a special relevance, considering our current
discussions re: technoheads, and the ominous anniversary that approaches,
soundlessly.

The Fundamental Project of Technology
by Galway Kinnell

"A flash, a white flash sparkled!"
        Tatsuichiro Akizuki, Concentric Circles of Death

Under glass:  glass dishes which changed
in color; pieces of transformed beer bottles;
a household iron; bundles of wire become solid
lumps of iron; a pair of pliers; a ring of skull-
bone fused to the inside of helmet; a pair of eyeglasses
taken off the eyes of an eyewitness, without glass,
which vanished, when a white flash sparkled.

An old man, possibly a soldier back then,
now reduced down to one who soon will die,
sucks a the cigarette dangling from his lip, peers
at the uniform, scorched, of some tiniest schoolboy,
sighs out bluish mists of his own ashes over
a pressed tin lunch box well crushed back then when
the word _future_ first learned, in a white flash, to jerk tears.

On the bridge outside, in a navy black, a group
of schoolchildren line up, hold it, grin at a flash-pop,
scatter like pigeons across grass, see a stranger, cry
"Hello! hello! hello!" and soon "Goodbye! goodbye!"
having pecked up the greetings that fell half unspoken
and the going-sayings that those who went the day
it happened a white flash sparkled did not get to say.

If all a city's faces were to shrink back all at once
from their skulls, would a new sound come into existence,
audible above moans eaves extract from wind that smoothes
the grass on graves, or raspings heart's-blood greases still,
or wails infants trill born already skillful at the grandpa's rattle,
of infra-screams bitter-knowledge's speechlessness
memorized, at that white flash, inside closed-forever mouths?

To de-animalize human mentality, to purge it of obsolete
evolutionary characteristics, in particular of death,
which foreknowledge terrorizes the contents of skulls with,
is the fundamental project of technology; however,
_pseudologica fantastica's_ mechanisms require:
to establish deathlessness it is necessary to eliminate
those who die; a task attempted, when a white flash sparkled.

Unlike the trees of home, which continually evaporate
along the skyline, the trees here have been enticed down
toward world-eternity.  No one knows which gods they enshrine.
Does it matter?  Awareness of ignorance is as devout
as knowledge of knowledge.  Or more so. Even though not knowing,
sometimes we weep, from surplus of gratitude, even though knowing,
twice already on earth sparkled a flash, a white flash.

The children go away. By nature they do. And by memory,
in scorched uniform, holding tiny crushed lunch tins.
All the ecstasy-groans of each night call them back, satori
their ghostliness back into the ashes, in the momentary shrines,
the thankfulness of arms, from which they will go
again and again, until the day flashes and no one lives
to look back and say, a flash, a white flash sparkled.