This is how things begin to tilt
into change,
how coalitions are knit from strands
of hair,
of barbed wire, twine, knitting
wool and gut,
how people ease into action arguing
each inch,
but the tedium of it is watching
granite erode.
Let us meet to debate meeting,
the day, the time,
the length. Let us discuss
whether we will sit
or stand or hang from the ceiling
or take it lying
down. Let us argue about
the chair and the table and
the chairperson and the motion
to table the chair.
In the room the fog gathers under
the ceiling and thickens
in every brain. Let us form
committees spawning
subcommittees all laying little
moldy eggs of reports.
Under the grey fluorescent sun
they will crack
to hatch scuttling lizards of
more committees.
The Pliocene gathers momentum and
fades.
The earth tilts on its axis.
More and more snows
fall each winter and less melt
each spring.
A new ice age is pressing the
glaciers forward
over the floor. We watch
the wall of ice advance.
We are evolving into mollusks,
barnacles
clinging to wood and plastic,
metal and smoke
while the stale and flotsam-laden
tide of rhetoric
inches up the shingles and dawdles
back.
This is true virtue: to
sit here and stay awake,
to listen, to argue, to wade on
through the muck
wrestling to some momentary small
agreement
like a pinhead pearl prized from
a dragon-oyster.
I believe in this democracy as
I believe
there is blood in my veins, but
oh, oh, in me
lurks a tyrant with a double-bladed
axe who longs
to swing it wide and shining,
who longs to stand
and shriek, You Shall Do As I
Say, pig bastards.
No more committees but only picnics
and orgies
and dances. I have spoken.
So be it forevermore.
--by Marge Piercy
submitted by Wendell Ricketts
