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Quite a swath of human history – lay in grief-soaked shadows.

But like a daily-used chalkboard, the ever-repeating patterns of history are often erased and forgotten… as too stark would be the truth, and too startled the student – of those ever-repeating patterns of waste… and the small few, that make their gain, from such heaps of carnage.

And “Like the first tremors of war”… the storm clouds, seem to be lumbering over the hill again.

Three separate explosions on the Nord Stream pipelines, seem to be a calling card of escalation.

Europe is now set to freeze this winter. Let us hope it’s a mild one.

~/~

If I recall correctly from decades ago, one of Diane Wakoski's numerous books of poetry began with an essay in which she wrote about finding the internal connections of a poem to other poems (the poet's. or other poets'), and I think she used one of Stevens' poems as an example.  This definitely affected my reading habits, as I like to read poems in the context of their connnection (explicit or implied) to other poetry.  As I began to read this poem, the first line reminded me of T. S. Eliot's poem, The Waste Land (which began to accumulate in his mind during the early tremors of the first Wolrd War); but the second line, and, indeed, the remainder of the poem presents a quiet apocalyptic vision like Eliot's poem, The Hollow Men.  Not to imply this is a slavish imitation of Eliot's poem; not at all, because Patricia's poem works well without knowledge of Eliot's poem, and she improves upon that example---perhaps we can call it quiet apocalyptic---by the variety of images her words present in elucidation of the poem's mood.  And, unlike The Hollow Men, her poem ends with an image of hope, of redemption, of the process called, by the Apostle Saint Paul, redeeming the time.  Patricia gives us a variety of the imagery of horror and despair, which reminded me of that old anthology series, The Dark Side, which began with images that became shadowy.  I remember a covered bridge, looking perfectly innocent in the broad sunlight, but in the shadows it became sinister.  As the poem proceeds and spreads its blanket of "grief-soaked shadows " over the landscape beneath "the growling, the branded sky."  Newness becomes terrifying; rain, which quenches thirst (echo of The Waste Land), is like hosannas (hymns of praise) locked into "living glass."  Glass is not supposed to be alive; it is an inert substance made from fired sand.  Glass can convey a beautiful vista, but it can also distort the view and, when shattered, it can cause injury:  if it has become alive, what might it be inclined to do?

   The flaw in most of our contemporary apocalyptics is that they give no chance for redemption.  Even The Hollow Men fails in that respect, as does many of the speeches that Dante placed in The Inferno which, by definition, could not any more attain redemption.  But the supreme apocalyptic example, the Apocalypse of the Apostle Saint John, concludes with redemption that arises out of the preceding destruction.  And this is the pattern that Patricia---not only an observant Poet but a great one as well---wisely follows because she understands that apocalyptic writing is not meant to frighten, and is not so much of a warning (because, for the most part, most of the people who could take warning from apocalyptic would not be interested in bothering to do so) as it is an encouragement to hope.  And this is where her poem now takes us---the great and utter washing of faith (with which I, emerging from a long "dark night of the soul" right now, can identify with and testify to) that leads to the blooming lilly which rejoices in the light after a thirstquenching rain.

   As I write this comment, chairbound in front of the main window of my house's living room, my western view consists primarily of the limbs and trunks of trees, and their profusions of green leaves, now shimmering in sunlight as a gentle breeze causes them to dance slightly on their limbs.  This is late afternoon sunlight in September in the midwest, and has always been a comfort.  This is so appropriate a moment during which to arrive at the conclusion of Patricia's magnificent poem.  She---like her great predecessor, the Poet among the twelve apostles, the Apostle Saint John---understands the proper usage of apocalyptic:  that it must always lead to an implied or an explicated redemption, else it is a mere exercize in terror.  Terror has its place, of course, and I am the first to seek out a good ghost story if it serves up the utmost terror.  But most ghost stories are not apocalyptics.  Even Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, itself a wildly successful ghost story, ends with a sense of redemption (in the Wedding Guest, not the Mariner); and Mary Shelley brought Frankenstein to a moment of redemption when Walton, confronted by the Monster, is not harmed, but has been given a new knowledge which he will retain while the Monster withdraws into darkness, distance, and a most certain immolation.  And of course, Dante's Inferno was only the first of the cantos; and behind the despair of the visions he saw there and the speeches he heard there was the knowledge, the always present knowledge, that he was visiting, conducted most safely by the great Poet, Vergil, who had been sent by Dante's girlfriend Beatrice, with the purpose of emerging from the apocalyptic visions of the first two cantos into the redemptive jubilation of the third Canto, the Paradiso.  Even in the third chapter of Genesis 3 is a sort of small apocalyptic in which we see two naked knuckleheads make a wreckage of the Garden of Eden, and yet they are given a promise (by, I believe, the preincarnate Christ) of the ultimate intervention of a Redeemer.  Patricia is not only the heir to all these apocalyptic patterns, but she is the worthy successor to the Poets who brought them forth; as she brings forth her own version, with its promise of redemption, in this beautiful and utterly "Patrician" poem.  I thank her for posting this poem; and, like all her others here on postpoems, the posting of it is an event ot be celibrated.

If I were to highlight the many brilliant lines in this poem, I might merely been accused of cutting and pasting the whole penning : ) So I'll chain myself back and highlight just a few:

"The last exhale of the world" is at once incredibly anti-apocalyptic, as it doesn't invoke a firey, explosive cataclysmic death, but rather the silent, hopeless onlooking of two eyes going still. It's too intimate, too real, and - to me - far more overwhelming to imagine. This reader wasn't really given the choice, as you set the tone almost immediately with these words. And chance of escaping the grasp of the feeling invoked by those words is vaporized by the imagery of a fruitless attempt of a distant, seemingly tiny star to shine on against the dominating power of our sun trampling our sky

Like a raging storm, it never lets up...until it does. And, in the only way that overwhelming emotions from devastation of the past, devastations of reality and of mere existence can coped with, it is a germination and bloom of hope that calms the senses and offers a longview that can be processed, and perhaps progressed on through.

Destruction is, ironically, the seed of hope. And hope is the seed of growth. We need not water Destruction, lest we rot the first seed before it germinates, as there will be inundating rains without any help from us and our mistakes. We need, as they say, only weather it and show our best resilience till "the airy, linen light" returns. 

Wholly incredible, intense, and - with patience - refreshing for the weary soul (such as this one). : )