The Feast Of Autumn

                                                                       The Feast of Autumn

 

                                                                                Cycle I

     

                                                                                     I

 

At twilight,

The crows fly to their roosting place in the east,

Flocks of hundreds

Flocks of thousands

Like black witches on brooms

Away from the sun, from the fading light.

Each day is shorter than the day before.

The nights are growing longer.

 

Soon the wind begins from the north.

That autumn wind

That sweeps down from the polar lands

Every year

To drive off the last frightened vestige

Of summer,

Sweeping in its savage blast

The dead and dying leaves of autumn

Driving them in swarms

Like frightened wraiths from

Across the moribund earth.

 

The tide heaves against the wet sand

Strewn with dead kelp, brown and rotting in the cold air,

And the surf begins its winter onslaught

Against fragile retaining walls.

 

Dogs are everywhere,

Running, barking, digging in the sand,

Sniffing each other’s bums,

Fighting, wagging their tails,

Shitting without shame

In front of their adoring humans who

Stand by dutifully

With plastic bags.

On their way home they

Deposit in trash containers their little bags full of dog shit,

They will pass along streets and lanes.

Their pedigreed dogs will lift their legs to relieve themselves,

Only just missing the outstretched legs

Of beggars and homeless people

Huddled in doorways

En route to their luxury condos.

 

                                                                                II

 

The wind is blowing tonight,

The first cold blast of the season.

In sheltered homes we turn up the volume

Of TV’s and stereos

And we forget this portent of change.

Sheltered from the cold air

We ignore

The transformation that is coming upon us,

In this autumn, this season of death,

Heeding not the Earth’s cry, our Mother’s demand

That we render back to her that which is hers,

What she has given us in trust,

Our frail bodies that perish slowly on the bone

No less than the dead leaves lining gutters

And clogging drains.

Red leaves, gold, yellow, orange and brown,

Colours of mortality, dying and death,

Some retaining traces of the soothing green that absorbed for the sacred trees

The solar nourishment

And delighted our eyes, had our eyes been open

To the incandescent splendour

Of light reflected on foliage

While we jogged along the forest trail,

Gasping like dying horses

Plugged into our i-pods

And blind to the naked beauty

Of the luminescent glory

Surrounding us.

 

The joggers run in every season

In this city of fools, on crowded sidewalks or forest trails,

So obsessed with chimerical perfection

Of body beautiful and perfection of limb and form

So as to miss the glorious drama

Played out around us and within our weak fragile bodies

The cycles of life, dying, death, rebirth and life and death again,

So God has given us Autumn,

This feast of mortality,

This statement of the temporary,

This annual reminder that death, feared or welcome

Is our birthright,

Is asked of us,

Demanded,

And fearing it or not,

So we all march and dance into her soft and waiting embrace.

 

                                                                           III

 

Tonight the crows fly to the east,

In wave upon wave of scattered flocks,

Their feathers black as the night that shall welcome them.

Their sonorous caws linger unheard

Over the motor traffic that spews its fumes of death

Into the air

To hover over this city of fools

While guilt-laden mothers and work-exhausted fathers

Prepare for ungrateful progeny

Less than adequate dinners

From convection microwaves

And kitchens blessed

With every modern convenience.

Wars in distant lands are brought into

Living rooms that never seem satisfactorily furnished

On wide screens and plasma screens

In between pompous lies and soporifics

Muttered by presidents and prime ministers

In between commercials

That hold our attention hostage

With promises of joy, satisfaction and eternal happiness

For the swipe of a VISA or debit card.

 

In regions we will never know have existed

The crows will settle for the night,

Resting in the cold air,

Heeding not the stars, the clouds or the rain

That will fall again

To reunite with the earth

The dead and fallen leaves.

 

The wind rattles the windows with a promise of death

But leaves untouched the glowing computer screens

That illumine our lives

Until the first power failure of the season

Plunges us into darkness, despair

And portents of the death that awaits us. 

 

                                                                     Second Cycle

 

                                                                           I

 

It began with the harvest:

Harvest moon, harvest of wheat, barley and corn,

Harvest of apples, peaches, plums and pears,

Harvest of grapes to be crushed into the wine of Christ’s blood,

And the bloody wine of Epicurean snobs,

And hazelnuts, walnuts and beechnuts

Scattered across the fecund earth,

And birds in millions fleeing the coming frost and bitter ice

Guided by the secrets of the stars

That shine like cold portents

In the gathering night

That warns of this season of death.

The air was still warm, but for the cooler nights,

And we wandered the streets

With tanned naked limbs

To ward off the coming winter

That for us would never arrive,

While in cafes and on sidewalk patios we sipped red wine and strong espresso

And mollified our stirring conscience with fair trade coffee. 

We walked, and dressed and groomed

And pampered with toys and treats

Our pedigreed dogs

While ignoring the homeless beggars standing next to our café tables,

Heedless of the waning light of the season,

We tortured ourselves inside vile-smelling gyms

With metal instruments

Our penance for our self-indulgence,

For not being thin, muscular or lissome,

Expiation of guilt for hating our bodies

That seem never to match

The air-brushed and computer-enhanced

Baby dolls and studlies

That laugh in our face

And mock us for those

Love handles and cellulite

And skinny arms

That beg for the blessing

Of lyposuction and steroids,

While forgetting ourselves, those selves

That emerge in our dreams

While we bury them throughout

lives of running, flight and departure,

Only to ignore in the artificial balm of meditation and yoga the hot and relentless pursuit

Of the unreckoned self,

That dogs us

From wellness seminar to party to night club

To nights passed in the beds of successive strangers

The three-headed hound of heaven, hell

And purgatory

Whose rabid and hungry muzzles

Already dampen our heels as terrified we run

Away from our day of reckoning.

 

In ragged flocks of hundreds, the crows are flying.

In evening flocks of thousands,

They fly away from the dying light

Into the darkness of the East.

 

                                                                           II

 

The fat turkey carcass lies

Golden and aromatic on the buffet table,

Surrounded by family, extended family,

Friends of extended family,

United in collective amnesia,

Of the eccentric artist cousin,

The daughter with a mental illness,

The brother who is purportedly gay,

And other silent absences from this feast of genocide.

Thanksgiving Day, Columbus Day, El Dia de las razas.

A day to pause, eat like a glutton and give thanks among

Relatives you cannot stand

For the prosperity and freedom of this great land we live in as less than welcome squatters,

This land of condominium towers and houses that only the rich can afford to live in,

This land of fashion slaves, dog owners and homeless beggars,

This land that screams in silent outrage

In the absence of its indigenous people

Murdered in the millions, this day of

Genocide.

Six million Jews can’t be wrong.

Neither one and a half million Armenians

(Serve this Turkey up for Thanksgiving),

Nor nearly a million Tutsis.

The crows scavenge in dumpsters among discarded turkey and stuffing,

Before their evening flight into the dark east.

They lived here, long before us, these crows.

And they will survive us

Long after our forgettable passing.

 

Then comes All Hallows, the pagan’s Christmas,

Drunken louts parading in dresses they would never otherwise be seen in,

While brats of all ages terrify dogs with fire crackers and roman candles.

Nothing remains in its grave on Halloween,

And soon the rotting pumpkins will be reunited

With the earth from which they once sprang.

 

Unnoticed, in churches the day after

The Saints are celebrated

As in clouds of witnesses

They descend from the celestial throne

To stand and adore among us

The living God who never dies.

Then comes All Souls’

A day for solemn walks

In damp and chilly graveyards

Silent again but never entirely still,

As black crows perch and caw from lonely grey headstones.

 

                                                                             III

 

Before phallic cenotaphs,

They stand

Each year, in the cold rain,

Older,

More bent,

More crippled.

Every year they are fewer

And soon they too shall follow their fallen comrades

To the damp and indifferent earth.

Everywhere from lapels and coats

Glow the indignant red poppies,

Like bullet wounds

From battles still being fought and waged.

The old soldiers,

Who shall never forget the beauty and strength of the young bodies,

The ideals and aspirations of their young unjaded souls

They had compromised, squandered and sacrificed on battlefields

And in air-raids,

Who sacrificed not themselves,

But were themselves sacrificed, by their lying governments

Get quietly drunk in the legion,

The deathly shrieks of bagpipes ringing in their heads,

Reinforcing through each round the lies and propaganda of war

That sustains the myth

That sustains their memory

Of that intolerable carnage,

That vast devastation of global metallic rage that

Sent Virginia Woolf to the river of her drowning,

Muttering under her breath while London was being bombed by German warplanes, as the waters rose over her lovely head,

These words:

“All that completeness: ravished.”

 

Most of London and her noble inhabitants still stood,

But Dresden was incinerated with all of its people.

Six million Jews, you say.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki I reply.

Nanking and Korean comfort women, you remind me…

But is it really a matter of who started it, when it was all ended

In the same abattoir, the same charnel house,

The same death and destruction of human flesh and human souls

That without their nations, their dictators, their lying politicians,

Their national myths and victors’ feasts

And victims anguish?

Do we really hear the cries of our dead, screaming for vindication,

Above the love songs of the blessed?

 

                                                                  Third Cycle

 

                                                                           I

 

They shine in the cold sunlight of late November,

Incandescent and bejeweled from last night’s rain

That scourged the homeless and flooded the earth.

The naked branches, divested of leaves,

Stripped of their raiment,

Liberated from their burden of glory,

Gleam against the blue sky,

The rhythms of life silent and dormant

Beneath the buds already forming for the coming spring.

Crows black and glossy like polished ebony

Caw at each other in the branches,

Light dancing in reflected gold and silver from their black wings.

The leaves have returned to the earth,

And feed the soil as they die into the new life

That will spring again from the rich soil.

 

Flanked by plastic holly and plastic Santas

We wander purposefully through malls

Serenaded by ancient carols made trite and consumer-friendly

To assuage our guilt

And staunch

That wound of hunger

That bleeds forever from our undeveloped souls.

 

Outside, an extra buck for a beggar stimulates four seconds

Of warmth, kindness and well-being

That gets snuffed out

As the boot extinguishes the glowing butt on the sidewalk

Decked in holiday style

And we try not to think

Of our state of paralysis

Of the helplessness that binds us hand and foot

Of bringing change, light and transformation

Into the self-devouring serpent

That has engorged us.

 

Even as winter approaches

There are tiny birds concealed in the naked twigs,

Blue Steller’s jays screaming from evergreen firs

And flickers adorning the blue sky

With the crimson lining of their outstretched wings.

Everywhere the crows are cawing.

 

                                                                           II

 

Death rolls like a haggard junkie on a skateboard among us,

Through public squares, parking lots and along crowded sidewalks.

Death creeps among us like black serpents,

Coiling round street lamps and touching our ankles with their flickering red tongues.

Death dances, a pale ballerina, leaping and pirouetting across our dreams

That we wake from in the middle of rainy nights.

 

The crows have filled the city

With their black and shiny presence

While overhead the raven soars.

The wind renews its force

And scatters the dead leaves,

Cigarette wrappers

And discarded butts,

And creeps into every tightly-sealed room

Through every tightly-locked door

To visit our dreams

And watch us

Like a dark-shrouded guardian.

The death wind of November carries on its chill robe

The muttered curses of the shivering homeless,

Dropping them like love letters onto your pillow.

 

The crows have returned to their resting place,

Again comes the rain,

Borne on the winds

Of violated innocence,

Uprooting and tossing like Popsicle sticks

The ancient fir and cedar.

Then the clouds are pushed on

Revealing the naked interstellar space,

Orion, the hunter draws his bow

And aims his arrow over us

At our darkened bedroom windows,

And again we wake from the visions,

From the auguries of the night. 

 

                                                                            III

 

Winter has begun

Though the winter solstice is still more than three weeks away.

Bundled in my long coat and thick sweater,

My head protected by

The faded black toque I found

In a park many years ago.

Dodging idiots driving with cell phones

And the toxic trail

Of second hand smoke

I greet without speaking,

Acknowledge without looking at

My brethren on the street,

Seated on the sidewalk,

Huddled in doorways,

Walking and staggering,

And muttering and shrieking

And singing

And talking

And tripping over pedigree dogs,

Dragged on leashes

By nicely dressed strangers

Trying not to run in fear

From the human sacrifice that surrounds us.

 

Orion has stretched and drawn his bow.

Orion has aimed at us his sharpest arrow

Not at

But through

The crows flying overhead to the dark east.

In this silence of autumn when no birds sing,

In this silence of death

That will swallow up

The noise and din that surrounds me,

I begin my advent,

Prostrated in the dead and living earth

From where I behold, worship and adore 

The light that never dies.