The Strong Brown God
Tuesday morning, gray sky, warm and a light rain is falling. Feels like May in late February. Wish that I knew what this radical momentary departure from winter means. Perhaps it means nothing, portends nothing that is to come. After all, it’s weather and weather is change on a daily basis, forgettable. Or maybe not.
Just finished reading The Dry Salvages by T. S. Eliot. The poem is a meditation upon time. It begins with a somber reflection upon a unnamed river. The river is characterized as “a strong brown god- sullen, untamed and intractable.” An engineer views the river as a problem to be solved, and once solved something to be forgotten. Yet the river, godlike keeps it’s seasons and rages, reminder of what men chose to forget, we worshipers of the machine.
I was reminded of our grandchild by Eliot’s observation that the rhythm of the river is present in the nursery bedroom, in the cut flowers on the table, and in the smell of autumn grapes. There is nothing more inspiring than the laughter and smile of a two year old child. Such is the timeless rhythm of the river touching the adult ear. There is wildness, unpredictable otherness in the laughter.
Since the election I limit my intake of news. The administrative violence and word of daily social upheaval is unsettling. This morning the administration is set to launch a full out effort to round up undocumented people, –all of them. Ten thousand new ICE agents and more Border and Customs officers are to be hired. While this great storm has been gathering I’ve heard no mention that Mexico and all of central America have been the economic colony of the US for generations. That’s right, we’ve stripped the value of the labor of those populations for expropriation for a very long time. And we continue to do so. What are they to do, in order to survive? Where will they go? Now they are here.
The Stasi are coming for them.
And the forgotten brown god awakens.
