Undulating Contours

We’re both bourgeois audience
and performance.
We live with the dominance
of a certain tendency.
Yet we long for a joyous communion.
No doubt about it.
We’re headed to a blurred indefinite place.
Not that we want to go.
We certainly don’t fully believe
in its prospects.
The garbage truck comes.
Half the garbage is left in the can.
I ask what’s the context of the climate.
Yes, there’s a dominance
of a certain tendency.
It has become a rigid mission.
But not all is lost.
We make peace with our forebodings.
We love old movie posters and film noir.
We love trees reflected in water.
Shimmering, they somehow look coquettish.
We still read George Orwell.
We read Conrad too.
We watch voyeuristic melodramas.
We love silent cinema and the color mauve.
We say freedom, not emancipation.
Meanwhile, high in the hills above our city:
secret carvings on boulders.
We are struggling to understand them.
If we have the discipline
they may redefine us—for the better.