The second portrait

This too is a message --

We have forgotten how to read.
See only stars --
We track the tides and storms
map different routes to work.  

We have forgotten how to read

the secrets of an opened bird.

The ancients with their magicians,

their calendars and instruments,

were wiser.

In the East and in the Americas,

in green Egypt, in their temples,

their eyes grew deepsouled from searching.

They read the circles in the world.

These lives we live now are circled too.

We live within one age:

another will succeed it.

After winter, always, there is spring.

Everything bad is a sign

we have forgotten how to read.

When landmines are sown

and reaped

when women and children are raped:

Read.

These are the death throes are the birth pains
the end of an age --
The entry to a kinder, wiser world.

We will live, then, more soul and soul.

Anyway that’s what I choose to believe.

It’s a more hopeful way of looking at the world

(we have to live in it)