Memorial Day Message to the UN

Americana Candy
from The Vermont Country Store

Message to the United Nations

I want the flags torn loose from the thunder
in the full sun of day, at the zenith,
in a hush, as steam rises in the greenhouses
and birds are struck mute by the heat;

I want the thunder torn from the tongue of the sun
and buried in the sea,
as children's marching - bands play out of tune
waving all their tinsel, their spangles and flags;

I want the thunder and the flags together burned
by a towering lens reflecting the sun,
a bowl of emerald, sapphire, and gold,
a paradigm of brightness,

and I want them swallowed forever
in the immense vertigo of hurled fire,
moribund salamander no longer able to rise:

and then, from the blazing center of the flames,
from the dizzying height of the incandescence,
a parade of lightning-strokes
silently to emerge in awesome serried rows,

proclaiming the Power of the universe
to humble the maddest of men,
dissolving the obscene dialectics of the generals,
obliterating all the configurations of politics

and welcoming the beatific lion whose mercy
sustains the people, the lion of Samson
in the stead of the lion of Nemea
vanquished by once-mad Heracles finally and forever,

and then, at last, the dissolution of ranks
in the regiments of slavery
as the people re-emerge from their sleep
and come forward in a vast alive frontier

in a hurricane of souls born again
in the silent thunderclap of the leaves,
on the sapient amplitude of the conflagration!

10 / 2 / 72

by Dan Propper (1937 - 2003)
[See also Samurai & Gulf]