The Glittering Dance
The glittering dance of brilliants
must be strung
on that dark thread of sadness
which is time.
Vernon Scannell (1922-2007)
These lines of verse by a British poet came to me as a precise summation of my feelings while absorbing the tune and lyric of Townshend’s anthem/prayer for solidarity, Join Together. Viewing the video, Roger Daltry and Pete Townshend in the prime of life, at the peak of creative energy, — a sadness comes over me. I remember well at that point in my life’s arc, I felt/thought that I would live forever. My life seemed open-ended with possibility, with adventures without end. I alone was the exception to time’s passage, to the wringer of mortality. I would not have been so foolish to have advanced the claim out loud, with a straight face. But that is how I felt.
Join Together is a magisterial anthem an appeal for solidarity; for making common cause against the proclivity for avarice and hubris which threaten our well being together. It is a glittering dance of brilliant words, guitar and keyboard chords, strung on the dark thread of time.
Time passes and so do we with it. The work stands as witness to truth, to decency, to compassion, to liberty.
Finally a poem by Richard Blanco that cuts-to-the-quick of the existential dilemma confronting each of us today.
NOVEMBER EYES
by Richard Blanco
I question everyone, everything, even the sun
as I drive east down Main Street — radio off–
to Amy’s diner. She bobby-pins her hair, smiles
her usual good mornin’ but her eyes askew say
something like: You believe this? as she wipes
the counter, tosses aside the Journal Times —
the election headlines as bitter as the coffee
she pours for me without a blink. After a cup
and a blueberry muffin I remember my bills
are due by the fifteenth — so I cross on Main
to the post office. Those American flag stamps
are all Debbie has left. I refuse to buy them:
a never mind in my eyes which she dismisses
with a gesture of suit yourself. Bills can wait,
but not my dog’s treats or the milk I’m out of
— so I drive up Main again to the Food Basket.
Paper or plastic, Jan asks me at the checkout,
but it doesn’t matter. What matters is this:
she’s been to my bar-b-ques, I’ve donated
to her son’s football league, we’ve shoveled
each other’s driveways, we send each other
Christmas cards. She knows I’m Latino and
gay. Yet suddenly I don’t know who she is
as I read the button on her polyester vest:
Trump: Make America Great Again, meaning
she doesn’t really know me either. We manage
smiles when she hands me my change, but
our locked eyes say: nothing — so I dash off —
go see Tom at the bank to cash a measly check
from some grand magazine for some grand
poem of mine loaded with some grand words
like transcend, as if my inked verbs could bend
a river’s will, shuffle stars, change the fate of
our nation, or the blur in Tom’s eyes thinking
what I think of our reflection on the bullet-
proof window, asking: So now what, Mr. Poet?
I can’t answer. I can only remember today
I’m supposed to buy a rake, lightbulbs, nails
to hang my aging mother’s photos — so I swing
by Union Hardware, see Dan who knows me,
and what I need. He rings me up, doesn’t say
Goodbye, says Good luck, as if his eyes can see
the uncertainty in my own, worried about:
my immigrant cousin, factory jobs, groped
women, hijabs, blacklists, bans, the church,
the deep state, cops, race, and which lives
matter, hacked votes, refugee camps, dead
children, missiles, suicide bombers, carbon
footprints, polar bears, sunk islands, my gay
marriage, the bills for my preexisting ulcer
flaring, guns at malls, guns at schools, guns
at clubs, more guns, more corporate rights,
soulless cubicles, the empty Supreme Court
seats, the border wall, bullying, the demise
of language, news, the silence of suspicion,
the uneasy guessing, the surprise of who’s
who, the cheers and gloating, or jeers and
swearing, the final picking of sides, right or
left, red or blue state, city, or town, but no
grey today except for the November clouds
looming over Main Street with all the rest
of our unrest, arrested in our eyes clashing
against each other’s glares, ready for battle.
