Category Archives: lit

“All these beefy Caucasians with guns. Get enough of them together, looking for the America they always believed they’d grow up in, and they glom together like overcooked rice, form integral, starchy little units. With their power tools, portable generators, weapons, four-wheel-drive vehicles, and personal computers, they are like beavers hyped up on crystal meth, manic engineers without a blueprint, chewing through the wilderness, building things and abandoning them, altering the flow of mighty rivers and then moving on because the place ain’t what it used to be. The byproduct of the lifestyle is polluted rivers, greenhouse effect, spouse abuse, televangelists, and serial killers. But as long as you have that four-wheel-drive vehicle and can keep driving north, you can sustain it, keep moving just quickly enough to stay one step ahead of your own waste stream. In twenty years, ten million white people will converge on the north pole and park their bagos there. The low-grade waste heat of their thermodynamically intense lifestyle will turn the crystalline icescape pliable and treacherous. It will melt a hole through the polar icecap, and all that metal will sink to the bottom, sucking the biomass down with it.”

Excerpt from The University of Man by Henry Dumas:

“Is it not true that without tools one’s knowledge can become useless?”

“Perhaps it is true.”

“Then what does one get at the university?”

Tyros thought again. “Knowledge and how to use it.”

“And then after you have gained the knowledge from the Universities of the East, West, North, and South, what will you do?”

“I do not know.”

“There is one more university. And the tools of its knowledge are learned all through the flow of one’s years.”

“What is the name of this university?”

“It has no name. It is a mystery.”

“What happens to those who graduate from this university?”

“Very few ever finish…. The weight of the tool is usually too heavy.”

Tyros reflected. “What is the tool? I would like to attend it someday. Where might I find it?”

“If one’s own weight is not too heavy a burden, if you can bear to look into the mirror of the river, you are very close to it, then. The greatest tool of education is the soul. The truly educated man is like a giant stylus etching in the sands of the earth. As he walks, words and songs flow behind him.”

“Who might be writing with the stylus?” asked Tyros.

“Who can name the source of a river?”

“It is a mystery,” said Tyros.

“Who can name the source of a canal?”

“Any man with knowledge of where it begins and ends.”

“With the knowledge gained at the university with no name, one does one’s work and there is no end to it. Knowledge flows as time flows.”

Night Palace
by Joanne Kyger

The best thing about the past
                                                is that it’s over
                              When you die
                you wake up
        from the dream
                                            that’s your life
Then you grow up
                              and get to be post-human
              in a past that keeps happening
    ahead of you

‘The poet John Keats once wrote to a friend of his named Bailey:

“I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart’s affection and the truth of Imagination—What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth—whether it existed before or not.”

The Chinese poet George Wu, who died in the Last Sino-Japanese War…understood this when he recorded: “Poets are the mad midwives to reality. They see not what is, nor what can be, but what must become.” Later, on his last disk to his lover the week before he died, Wu said: “Words are the only bullets in truth’s bandolier. And poets are the snipers.”

You see, in the beginning was the Word. And the Word was made flesh in the weave of the human universe. And only the poet can expand this universe, finding shortcuts to new realities the way the Hawking drive tunnels under the barriers of Einsteinian space/ time.

To be a poet, I realized, a true poet, was to become the Avatar of humanity incarnate; to accept the mantle of poet is to carry the cross of the Son of Man, to suffer the birth pangs of the Soul-Mother of Humanity.

To be a true poet is to become God.’

– Dan Simmons, Hyperion

Believe in the Future
by Shi Zhi

When cobwebs relentlessly clog my stove
When its dying smoke sighs for poverty
I will stubbornly dig out the disappointing ash
And write with beautiful snowflakes: Believe in the Future
 
When my overripe grapes melt into late autumn dew
When my fresh flower lies in another’s arms
I will stubbornly write on the bleak earth
With a dry frozen vine: Believe in the Future

I point to the waves billowing in the distance
I want to be the sea that holds the sun in its palm
Take hold of the beautiful warm pen of the dawn
And write with a child-like hand: Believe in the Future
 
The reason why I believe so resolutely in the future is:
I believe in the eyes of the people of the future
Their eyelashes that can brush away the ash of history
Their pupils that can see through the texts of time

It doesn’t matter whether people shed contrite tears
For our rotten flesh, or our hesitancy, or the bitterness of our failure
Whether they view us with sneers or deep-felt sympathy
Or scornful smiles or pungent satire
 
I firmly believe that people will judge our spines
And our endless explorations, losses, failures and successes
With an enthusiastic, objective and fair evaluation
Yes, I await their judgement anxiously

Friends, please let us believe in the future
Believe in our unbending striving
Believe in our youth that can conquer death
Believe in the Future: believe in Life.

Beijing, 1968

https://www.zgnfys.com/m/a/nfwx-30418.shtml

The Answer
by Bei Dao

Debasement is the password of the base,
Nobility the epitaph of the noble.
See how the gilded sky is covered
With the drifting twisted shadows of the dead.

The Ice Age is over now,
Why is there ice everywhere?
The Cape of Good Hope has been discovered,
Why do a thousand sails contest the Dead Sea?

I came into this world
Bringing only paper, rope, a shadow,
To proclaim before the judgment
The voice that has been judged:

Let me tell you, world,
I—do—not—believe!
If a thousand challengers lie beneath your feet,
Count me as number thousand and one.

I don’t believe the sky is blue;
I don’t believe in thunder’s echoes;
I don’t believe that dreams are false;
I don’t believe that death has no revenge.

If the sea is destined to breach the dikes
Let all the brackish water pour into my heart;
If the land is destined to rise
Let humanity choose a peak for existence again.

A new conjunction and glimmering stars
Adorn the unobstructed sky now;
They are the pictographs from five thousand years.
They are the watchful eyes of future generations.

Without
by Joy Harjo

The world will keep trudging through time without us
When we lift from the story contest to fly home
We will be as falling stars to those watching from the edge
Of grief and heartbreak
Maybe then we will see the design of the two-minded creature 
And know why half the world fights righteously for greedy masters 
And the other half is nailing it all back together
Through the smoke of cooking fires, lovers’ trysts, and endless 
Human industry—
Maybe then, beloved rascal
We will find each other again in the timeless weave of breathing
We will sit under the trees in the shadow of earth sorrows 
Watch hyenas drink rain, and laugh.