Sunday, February 23, 2020

They sang




They Sang 

They sang and shouted danced in the 
streets and in pastures of mud - tore their 
clothes and slung placards, marched barefoot 
flowers in their hair - large guns low on their hips
planted farms, blew buildings to dust, bore babes 
They sang and shouted, sat in, stood up for change 
...and it came ...never fast or furious enough to calm 
the fever dream, never fast enough to comfort the hearts,souls and standard bearers of those who danced and marched and believed with shining eyes, strong bodies, clear vision that the future was theirs... The future is now - ... Now, the singers voices rasp, 
the shouts muted, the dancers tempo misses a step here and there, clothes cover bodies that chill, the ground too sharp or slick for tender aching soles , their flowers are now in gardens, tended with care, the babes born, now grown and flown, the shame 
and passion of violence a misted dream of wonder... They sang and danced and believed with no reason to think other , that the rolling future was theirs ...
The future is now ...and as is the way of all time not
waiting with soft gentle arms to embrace their struggle or cheer their dance  .... 
The future was never theirs, and as they watch others dance and shout and raise their young throats in joyous expectation ...they know, these discarded, silvered sagging soldiers of fortune that the future is always alive, consigned, grabbed and held fast in the now of yesterday, today and tomorrow ...for the future of the present  is the fickle fantasy of believers. The future does not wait. Soon the dancers of the past will nurture the soil - the dancers of the present will miss a 
step or two and still others will take their place ...This is 
the way of the dance, the delusion, the dedication, the 
decision to do ..all one can do whilst one can, to act 
whilst blind to the curtain ever ready to fall in graceful 
folds upon the performance as new actors stretch their legs,  in the wings of time.  Ready to leap into a future they truly believe, in passionate innocence,  will belong to them. Dance, march, fall together in fervent passion ...the changes will come and others will dismiss them as lacking..but that is for later, for now, they all dance, the former sidelined in disillusion, or satisfaction,  abandoned  artifacts revered, reviled or ignored, the current crop gathered  in coalesced linked arm embrace ...the not yet born kicking their heels in their mother’s wombs ...ready to be born to a world they will create and a future they will never own . 

6 comments:

  1. Love this especially; "This is the way of the dance, the delusion, the dedication, the decision to do."💝

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  2. ...'the future of the present is the fickle fantasy of believers' ~ true. This is immense in its scope and a fascinating read.

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  3. Wow! Wonderfully said. Wish I could say no to this, but it has much truth. Such a beautiful dream we had, in the sixties ... as others have had at other times, before ... and now.... I hope it is enough that some changes do happen – enough changes, I hope – even if we never get to Utopia.

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