Lunacy’s Lament "Here, as everywhere, war has stemmed the flow of news; I sit in shadow, vainly committing these verses to the air." –DuFu (b 712AD) When lunatics take the capital the last good harvests are given to the rich while reapers and gleaners must plan a secret way out of the kingdom before they are forced to carry guns or witness their children disappear. When lunacy becomes the book of the land all power resides in the belly of the maniac, the flourpots are invaded by rats. And the last cellars of gold, saved for any predictable famines? Squandered in orgies of sycophants. The rarest birds no longer appear. When a lunatic is given keys to the house, its gardens will be raided, its hinges unhinged, and the last daughters of the moon will tear at their hair as priceless tapestries become bedclothes for whores and pimps. Nothing is spared. The academy is occupied by the incurious and impudent until troops of the insane plunder books and scores and smash all the instruments to make lies indistinguishable from truth. This is not a unique phenomenon. Didn’t our ancestor songs warn us again and again? What was our preoccupation? Who was transforming our will into dust while we thought we toiled to make our country just? The lunatics substitute pen and voice for scimitar and scepter, make the larynx a conjuror of shadow’s decree. They ignore the heralds of floods as rivers overflow the dams while snow and inferno unite to muffle the relentless lament of famished children. It does not matter which songs we sing to repel them, the lunatics are deaf to our appeals. They have infected themselves with their own mortal disease. It has been waiting in their marrow and the marrow of their fate for many generations. We wish we would have known that now. We wish we would have found ways when it could still be assuaged. And still, we must find the will to proceed.
*
The final two poems of my Train series will be forthcoming next week
At this point my plans for publishing my novel “Times Fool” here are as follows:
I will publish installments of the book every other Tuesday. The book follows several distinct story lines. With that in mind, and so my readers can get a clear idea of the procession and interaction of the story lines, the first installment will be long enough to include all the plotlines. Subsequent installments will be shorter.
As usual, I hope the process of publishing the novel here will assist me in clarifying and making revisions, even beyond my hopes that it will find a few readers that find it compelling and worthy of the time it takes to read it. I will keep you informed of the start date, which will be in the latter half of February.
Thanks to you all. I hope Compendium: The Kitchen Sink fosters a little stability in these unstable times. I am grateful for your continued readership.
