3505. TEA TIME I FATHOM

TEA TIME I FATHOM

Just like the man before me, the old one,
with his ever-stiff arm somehow supporting
a flag, I stood at allegiance to hundreds of
sour things. Reason that peeled, like the
paint off the old man's solid garage, tried
to keep me straight  -  those million patriotic
lies we are fed to keep us sated. No, I
thought, I bowed to no one, I thought.
I 'raised high the roofbeams, carpenters'.
I went to the amusing town of Bemidji with
Aaron Copland and Victor Kraft, I walked the
Mesabi, I sang with Pete Seeger. I did
everything I could to be a good Communist.
It all failed, and everything crumbled down
around me. God damn it all, I'm done
for good. And what is left? Nothing.
They are mostly gone now, or soon
shall be, and all that has been left
behind are their baskets of sour apples
and bad excuses, reasons for the
diminution of everything around us.
Salute not, whatever it is you are saluting;
it was all for naught and worthwhile of
nothing at all, or at least nothing in any
way exemplary. Yes, yes, then, I shall
indict an entire generation. My paradoxical
elders have brought me nothing really.
In fact, the larger void they left is bigger
than I will ever be, and it is filled with
nothing so much as irrepressible urges,
lines of fault, and charged particles of
creative doubt and effort.
Oh well. I suppose.