BABEL

BABEL

everybody talking
nobody hearing
nobody listening

not the poets
even the poets
especially
    not the poets

for where
   are the old guys, what
happened those brigades
who came to
Spain, who streamed
in to Catalonia?

those old universalists,
absurd internationalists,
comic characters in
every historical
                       drama

so beautiful their
pipe dream of comradeship,
a lovely insanity
that could not hold
yet
   might have
saved us

not that I am here to knock
the appeal of all those
Caesars and Francos
rewriting the law
from the vaunted
point of advantage
of their
    glorious, golden,
divinely ordained thrones

telling it
      like it is, like it
has to be

polishing a set of shared words
until
    their speech being
all light
and fire

burn like suns
bright beyond question