To An Unkind God
(For Ruth Crawford Seeger, who taught me to despise those gods that may be there; for Nietzche, who taught me to ignore them; for my mother, who taught me that they’ve always been there; and for Pete Seeger, who taught me never to stop searching for them.)
“To a Stillborn Child”
I am now just scattered dust.
How’s that for an existence never begun?
A ghost of a shell,
A shell of a ghost,
Tears and ashes lost in the breeze.
Never to have, never to love.
A gift to two children together as alone;
Bereft both still young of family,
Placing their dreams on roulette,
Thinking “This will fill a glass long broken.”
Never to have, alone in love.
I watch from this windblown coast,
A sea beneath me, in me,
Spires and motion before me, beyond me,
A labyrinth of motion, action and lives
Spiraling in a circle without end, yet me?
Never to have, never to know.
I watch, neither angel nor demon,
Though I await my Virgil —
Perhaps there’s some distant blaze to find
A purification or the dream of Paradise?
Never to have, never to reach.
Yet I will keep this watch,
For you alone are the stars I seek.
Seek not your spires, your towers
The truth I speak will never there be found.
For most, never to have, never to see.
