The Poetry of Richard Gylgayton

Peculiar

Take the initiative. Pat your neighbor on the back

utter congratulations, in a muffled voice,

on the status of our civilization. Discuss in an offhand manner

the advantages of easily disposable literature;

the printed word melts and slips off the page after it is read once,

stories of steel cages constructed where ruins once stood,

villages and ancient forests swept away by the captains of industry,

police dramas, the distress of parents who have lost their children,

unauthorized biographies of the rich and famous.

One moment there is something here that is exciting,

then it passes away through a thick curtain of boredom,

a gauze that hides the faces of the dancers from the audience,

the same sheet that cloaks the walking wounded

as they sleep and dream about the straw head of an ancient steer

or a colored vase decorated with pastel satyrs.

A peculiar, barbaric age, in which revealing voices are absent.

There is a buzz that never stops.

It quells the Muse, and lights phosphor windows in the homes of America,

a blue glow that passes for daylight,

rising from marshes corruptible and sweet like overripe fruit,

It drones through the voices on the radio

that update the headlines hourly

and bring us the rest of the world as diversion.

There is a gap we cannot cross.

As I build the bridge it shimmers and dissolves into nothingness

like the slow dimming of city lights in the morning.

Time slips by the windows of the train, the houses, the factories,

the Pentecostal way of truth academies.

I am young and old at the same time, hating as deeply as I love.