READING THE FALL

For nostalgia's sake, I read

between old Chinese poems

and science fiction from my youth -

visions of the future and alternate past

transformed into eulogies

for a dying America -

old Alistair MacLean novel I picked

from a local library's book exchange shelf,

When Eight Bells Toll,

but here, Kello lyö

("The Bell Tolls").

I have a vague memory

of reading it, once,

holding a copy in my hands,

turning the pages, the sea coming

in large gray waves from the pages

into my thoughts,

what must have been thirty-five

years ago or so, back when

my free time went tramping

between musky covers

like these or scribbling juvenile

lines in notebooks, and when

I ventured outside, the cloudy

autumn days like this had in them

the same vast and wide promise

as the brightest summer hours.

Of the days then and the days now

slipping past, equally lost,

only the Chinese poems,

from the great Tang and Sung poets

carrying the essence of human experience,

undiluted by the passage

of the otherwise wounding time,

will remain for whatever future

will emerge to save

what can be saved, from this deliberate

wrecking of the collective

ships and little boats of our dreams

that were sailed against

the sharp-edged cliffs.

07.09.2025