LAMENTATIONS

by David Eide

The poet, inundated by the stories that flow like invisible rivers around the walking crowds, knows that several lifetimes will be needed to depict the life that he experiences. The memory of who he knows and has known move like histories in his mind; he whistles them down nervously until they appear as utterly different than the thousand variables contained in any one's history.

The poet sees the drama that is not apparently there. He knows that to know is to get inside the houses and offices of the people. The people, closed off by necessity, bowing to the strongest image that is offered by those trying to sell them something. Oh, the happy characters!

He has met a beautiful woman today. She is engaged in psychological practices. She has diverted his attention and, strangely, made him feel sad, pity for the woman who he assumes is deeply wounded. She does not believe in anything but processes. She does not believe in anyone but the facilitator. So, the poet becomes her plaything for a period of time and is finally driven out to the flatlands where peace can be found.

The pain the spirit suffers is duly recorded by the poet who, for a moment, feels pleased that he is one of the suffering ones. Does that not make him more than the animals? Does it not make him more than the buzzing life that is stacked up, there, organized against all pain and suffering?

There are moments of desperation when he wants to grab someone, a total stranger, and demand to know where the suffering comes from. "Ah," the stranger would say, "they will destroy you if you let them see you suffer."

Part of the pain consists in the fact that at one time the poet felt he knew the people and their activity. At one time, a brief moment, he felt inalienable from the world and danced in its perfect flame, thinking that the desire for eternity and eternity itself are the same thing. The worlds that collapse in the poet! The world that breaks and fly through the receding dark of the omnivorous universe! The worlds that were and never will be! The dissolution of worlds remove the familiar from the faces he has known. They become lie beasts out of his haunted dreams and scourge him for the stupidity of his innocence; taunt him for his aspirations. Do you not know that the future is created in the falling sky?