Author: Duncan MacNae

What good is that rage
Imperative in old age
Against the dying light
Mourning a world so bright

Now at dim noonday
Only middle-aged regret 
Seems appropriately futile
Sun shrouded by the smoke
Of burning forests

Hidden glimpses of the darkened 
Door, the haunted stair, the deep 
Well of unbeing. 

All our unfounded expectations
Like the woman engaged in 
Unsolicited conversation says
Some turn out good, some bad
Discussing the price of coffins
Songbirds fall from the skies
Mountains burning, cities restless
Plague raging over all

And a billion raging at the sky, 
Five billion, will change not
The mysteries of the darkened door
Nor the terrors of the haunted stair
Will not slow the motion of the 
Smoke concealed sun
In its appointed course.

Poisoned apples strew the ground
Beneath a twisted tree, roots
Sunk deep in brother’s blood,
Branches bent with hangman’s noose.
But the beautiful flowers once a year
Take up all attention, women 
In their Sunday hats, men in white shirts,
Children at their play on Easter morning
After the lynching.

Your brother’s blood, your sister’s blood
Cries out from the red earth that
Drank it. The land is polluted
With blood. Your holy places 
Drip crimson. The poison seed
Sprouts in every corner,
Comes up in the cracks 
At the base of your genocidal 
Monuments, along the edges 
Of your haunted cotton fields,
Infects the children’s laughing play.

But we savor the tang of the drug
In the poisoned apple pie, revel
In the adrenal burst that comes
From our unjustified rage, pride
Ourselves in our capacity for 
Murder.
Violent, prideful of our ignorance,
Unmerciful, implacable, unholy.

Is that why our crosses are all empty?
No desire to contemplate the broken
Human form we have perpetrated, too like 
The hanged, the ones tied with wire
To a concrete block and sunk in that
Deep, black river of sorrow, 
Too like the shattered bodies of our
Brothers and sisters. 

But now pray for sunrise and repentance,
Drive murder from your hearts
Lift your brother, your sister, 
Or rather let them lift you, into the light.
There is power in the blood.

Summer drawing to its close
Even the sun lingers abed
With all the sleeping house
And I write these lines again
By amber lamplight.
The grey day strengthens 
Through open blinds
Mundane, quotidien, unpoetical
Yet undeniably comforting
Even though
I know
In this strange, rich town children
Will wake without breakfast, even
Now people stirring hungry in DeVargas
Park, people rising without water 
Out beyond bloody mountains
The poor we have with us always
Advice, consolation, denial, excuse

The loaded gun on a table
Filled with toys
Marketing come to denouement
Angry crowd defying order
Good sense reason
Burns the grocery or the capitol
Parading lawless spreads disease
Symptoms of the deeper sickness
That treats your brother sister 
Like object, animal, imposition
On consumer Liberty, fake
Essential fraud, longing for those
Cheap holidays in others’ miseries
Forced gaze upon our own
Empty brutality. 

Where is the end of this 
Sad litany of our troubles?
Broken below on those ancient rocks – 
Property, hatred, violent force,
Men with crooked crosses -
Or ahead through rocky steeps of love
The road of time overgrown with
Roses of an eternal world.

All we leave behind us, intangible,
Inconsequential, indistinct drifts
Of old papers, postcards from
Inishbofin ferry, tickets for long
Defunct plays
This alone is distinguished, high-domed
Vault of brain, no other like it in all
The animal realm, unmistakable. 
Our trademark and avatar, grinning
With all the crooked teeth on display
Piled outside the gates of 
The sacked city, polished and revered
Among those who still have reverence
Bleached white under the junipers
Along the arroyo, patinated brown, 
Candle rising from the brain pan
Empty sockets beholding disappeared joys,
Vanished terrors
All we ever felt leaping in our breast
Mediated within the bony orbit.

The earth is filled with skulls
Fruit of our mortality dropped over-ripe
or green like wind blown apples
from the tree of life, gathered in drifts
indistinguishable as the hickory nuts
we children gathered in leaf shadowed
woods. 

Where is the place of the skull? The giant
Holds it above weary shoulders. Niches
Of the old altars stand empty, but it is
The mark of our time, this time, 
And place. Is there no difference then between the 
Giant foam rubber calavera and the rotten
Cranium weathering out from the old
Churchyard into the rising sea below
One to gather dust in suburban garage crypt
The other, ground away by rock and wave
Adding phosphorous and fineness 
To white sand that will be. Cartoonish
Screaming from the pickup rear window
Tattooed on the would-be death bringer’s
Neck, as if by some wishful power they might
Gain power, avoid their symbol as their
Last estate. Bespectacled on moss 
Encrusted tombstone, flagstone floor
Of the ruined church covers hundreds-
Grandmothers, babies who never saw the light,
Strong men who sat their saddle too tall
In the lightning storm.

But this is not the place of the skull. 
The place of the skull is that low hill
To the east, almost concealed with 
Modern shopping malls, apartment
Houses, conveniently
Central, but easy to ignore.
 Negligible to climb, honeycombed
With caves like eye sockets, caves
Filled with the skulls of men, 
The first men, the first man, 
The old ones, inexpressibly old, 
Waiting for deliverance in their
Unmentionable import.

The last man will not need the space. 
The new ones leave only ash and 
Good intentions. A tall tree rises
From the rocky ground, dividing 
Shadow like the sundial of eternity-
All changes, but the bony husks
Of our ever hopeful brains
Gather drifted like the mast of the forest
In red autumn, nurture the wild things
That are coming after, wild hopes
Wild terrors laid bare by the impending storm.

The holy well lies dry now, clogged, 
Grown thick with rushes, where the 
Old saint picked up his tyrant-severed 
Head and quietly walked down to see
The beach one more time, to hear 
The waves break once more on 
The round-stoned beach.

Almost it seems like play
This thrice-warming work
Except for the weight
And casual brutality of the axe
Rending ages of growth
To piles of resin-rich splinter
The tearing pop, inexplicable
Resistance of twisted grain
Almost it feels like work
But for the warmth to come.

Quiet morning
Morning to leave behind
Unbearable burden of the 
Past. To forget and forswear
Murder, kneecapping, baseball bats,
Random gunfire, stones, truck assassinations
Gasoline bombs, rage and pride.
Morning to remember mountains,
The last time we saw him, strong and whole,
Music and song triumphant, justice
Come ‘round again, come the first time
Give a taste of mercy, of kindness
Where are the rioters of kindness?
Where is the mercy mob?

Changing of seasons occupy these poems
Light now changing, chill in the air, shortened
Days. Time racing in its track like an ancient
Penny arcade machine, filled with tin horses.
Leaves begin to fall, irresistible poetical image
Marvel of the the revolving year, and the sun
To come winter-hot through bare branches.
Premonitions of frost, do the fading flowers
Number their days? If only we had faith
The sun could run backward across the sky
If only we had hope, love would fill this 
Autumn dawn. If only we had love
We could change seasons. 

But still would come to that last sleep-bringing
Frost, and quiet until the ever-altering spring
Comes around again. 
Poetical political multifarious
Impatient decisive horticultural
Growth upon growth, decay under decay
We begin again the interminable wait 
For the coming of the green-blushed branches
Revenant ash leaves, rain-bringing oak.

The ring should be rigid,  made of brass or iron.
The desiderata are then disposed of, the rest thrown away
And the beating renewed.
The larger the umbrella, the greater the chance of making
Rich captures.
A stout pocket knife will do service, but far better is a 
Common chisel with a short handle.
Many of the specimens washed ashore are dead and decaying
But the majority are alive 
And in excellent condition.
Various “light traps” can be advantageously used. 
There is an embarrassing wealth of collecting opportunities
In a good location. 
Between the collecting of specimens
And their final disposition
A good deal of mechanical work is necessary.
Many specimens die relatively quickly
If placed in an empty box.
The use of alcohol, on the whole will greatly facilitate killing, 
But killing with the fumes of chloroform
Or ether, is often practiced by those who dislike
The use of alcohol.
Killing may be accomplished by use of a needle 
Dipped in liquid cyanide
But the needle must be of ivory or of bone.
(These recommendations are based on my experience
And that of my acquaintances and correspondents;
They embrace methods which many
American practitioners have found
Satisfactory.)

Rain at last, in the night.
Waking to the drip of water from eaves
Hopeful as the doctor’s good report
Yesterday
Not all sufficing, but a brief spell
Of mercy, mercifully leading on 
To other mercies, waking dream seeds,
Forgotten sunflowers, poppies of promise,
Causing runner grass of concern to spread
And grow even faster, painting the horizon
Misty gray – no more clearly perceived
Void of sky, but rather shifting possibilities,
Potentials, buried promises spring up,
Slow steady drip of life.

Twenty years have passed in one
And I leaning on my hoe, breathless
Watering the winter-dry compost heap
While my darlings do the work
Sixteen penny nail in my ribs and back
But we get it done, this last garden clearing
Though we do not know that now
Assassination of cutworms
Purging of runner grass
Planting the first hopeful peas and
Carrots
Rotten old sunflowers removed,
Ruins of cornstalks hauled to the burning
Changing of the world, blooming of the weak
Assumption of strength, surrender of pride
Survival of gardens.

Silvery blossom half-dreams
Of a raw grey half dawn
The horses eat the flowers 
Ringing like little church bells

Ringing out our old world, ringing
In something new, in the half dream
Quiet of the house on a morning 
Of recurrent dreams, waking visions

Half remembered wishes, drowning worries
Travel through the plague, settle in a new place
New work for an old man, that paltry thing
Unless I sing, but the song is full of dreams
And vague imaginings. 

Mouth of the night, jaws of the morning
Whirlpool of evening after the deep 
Hole of five o’clock afternoon blues
The abyss is not empty, teems with half-visioned
Apparitions, voices long departed, streaks
Shadow grey across the sun’s mowed field
No taste of summer fruit, why no taste of fruit
Where is the music sounding, jostling dance
Warm embrace, and if so, if then, 
What is the change we pass through 
Or is it into oblivion we come at last
Through the mouth of the night?