I
A Kingly creature; now creatureless King
An Empire out of breath while breathless doing
Air, water, land all three commanded
to remain in place and serve
They wilt under the lash of gentle commerce
whilst jolly plenty stumbles along in filthy blindness
All living things now cringe at the gross summons of Man
Yet meanwhile Gaia gathers up her furious arms in Amazonia,
Under the Sea, and over glacial ridge rallying to expel
this internal invader and push him back either
into oblivious earthly Armageddon
or into the cold mocking stare of the stars
II
The Peculiar Human Gnaw has overtaken all of life
Or was it always to be so?
In more Halcyon days
Every hunger was checked by another
Until Consumption reduced nature’s maw
into a tiny red sack of paroxysmal fury
The First Commandment: Feed Naked Ape
Even the Sun must be brought down, ever closer
For the warmth of Gaia only heats up to slowly fade
And towering in power resplendent
is Homo Loquens blithely chattering away his implosive doom
III
All loosen the golden reins of Helios
and arraign the ancient nymphs of the half-hidden alcoves
for all will be measured to new oblivion
and fitted to Faustian forgetfulness
Night shall be cast away under the glare of Argus-Eyed cities
And days shall rush by withered by productive rhythms
And there will be no song, no feast, no true fecundity
For the Lyre is unstrung and rusted
The Banquet tables lain bare
For Today Persephone shall be crowned queen of the underworld forever
IV
For the Mastery of the Word a World was lost
Cold cognition could not coalesce willingly
In nature’s corrective undulations
A planet turned into a grey shade of Ape Neo-Cortex
Neurons a-flame; all is fire now
The first flint strike has spread far
The flickering shadows of hungry beasts have been banished
by Ape-Fire
The terror of ancient nights has been put to sleep
Yet all encompassing fear has returned in a blinding chariot of luminous flight
V
We eat what we have made
A burning repast of steel, coal, oil, aluminum and innocent
flesh and bone
We eat and laugh and laud abundance
in clever circulatory ways
We move the dials of speed and of time
making light of eternity and of vastness
We are larger than the largest
Our grand freedom has enchained the world
We are bad children
who will never escape Mother
Even now her slow smoldering hands reach out
to scorch and to smother our rebellious nonchalance
VI
To sustain the unsustainable beast
To hold a roar that shatters the air
To resist the wave that inundates the shore
To darken the blast that blinds all
This is our unmistakable task
To bind the fateful excellences of Man
Before the remonstrance of the storm
VII
Takanakapsaluk
You have exited the water
leaving trails of yellow-green excrescence
to mark your demise
The watery carcasses of your proud sons and daughters
mock your lugubrious final march
The land has triumphed over water
From whence tiny life emerged
Now broad death gurgles and submerges
Aqueous exile
Choked Goddess
Silent towers of Sand, Salt, and Gypsum will be your curse
VIII
Fire is our true God
In burning we are what we are
The destiny of heat is our story
The flame has shaped our mind and maw
We stare slack jawed and bug eyed into the millenial orange light
Mesmerized by the transmogrifications of energy
We fluorescent shamans
We flash our teeth and powerfully raise our hands
In festivals of fire
We prepare for the coming of cold, ashen nights
IX
The dragons are all here
Every one
St. George seeks his sword in vain
stuck somewhere in a mountain of trash
The banners of our fine crusade
have unfurled throughout the lands
We have been stung by the announcement
of our grand superfluity
We heroes of culture
We villains of the bio-sphere
We are all here
Dragons and knights
Monsters and Madmen
Tangled in hot incomprehensible breath
Grasping one another while slipping down
under the immense spasmodic scales of planetary death
X
Four horrid horses graze knowingly
in the pastures of the Apocalypse
Their Ape-Riders feed them generously
Emerging from electronic shadows of gluttony
the hoots and howling of The Erect Predator
It is a sabbath of Cerebral Gods
Strong sinewy riders of oblivion
Malthus is their half-forgotten stable boy
while The Symphony of Darwin is preparing its final algorithmic coda
XI
The first Gods are nearly dead
They call out their signs in hopes
for the return of The First Shaman
But the New Medicine man deals only
in poisons
He is a careful collector of the dead
Taxidermy has become his reflexive religion
The Chorus of the Gods grows louder
But Mankind like a drunken Oedipus
will continue to defile and to kill
until he will hear the sudden split
and crack
of his blind ontology
XII
Behold: Empire
Do we worship the Big
because we are so small?
We enlarge to desecrate
Vertiginous Profanity!
We will not stop
until we cannot see
An Empire of Native Earth
is not enough
There is talk of stars
of the universe
Was hubris the secret force
that originally set us to walk?
XIII
What can be saved?
The mewing child turns up its face
at a world painted in pain
Threads unspool
Stories are told backwards
We all want to build time-machines
to take us anywhere
but here
Dan Corjescu has a PhD in Continental Philosophy from Sofia University. Teaches at Ravensburg-Weinburg and Neu Ulm University of Applied Sciences.
GET COUNTERCURRENTS DAILY NEWSLETTER STRAIGHT TO YOUR INBOX
