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The Justice Dept 8p PT/11p ET on Netroots Radio Presents: "To Know the Catastrophe to Come" [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-08-20
if the heart of the bell breaks
catastrophe will strike: that is the legend
last time, a flood;
next, who can know but the bell, its cloven meat
quiet crack of bronze anticipating its own demise
drowned in the clang-like fist & metal murmur
what other creature keeps its heart inside its head full
of the hour’s secrets & tender prayers?
I do not doubt the stories—
how bells say & say even after
they have been lost
in the rubble or at sea
say & say how they paced
into hiding, or grieved their knell siblings
melted for war’s hungry rounds,
how they stilled their blood
in the chill of state restraint,
that longest & most silent hour
of the body’s yearning, say:
a silver bell is really a thumbscrew, no
heart at all, say: touch me,
I am no longer a bell if I do not ring
how bells say & say
perfectly tuned by centuries, their
hammered & quarreling overtures
haunting ringent ears
calling the forgotten, calling me, I’m called
to pray in the clamor, holy brazen speech
carapaced in its stony tower, devout lick of metal
to the ferrous brim, its chime sway waking my deadest earth
to pray which is to taste you ring you
loud to greet you a thousand times
offer my heart to your mouth & bellow the walls—
anything that reminds me how small we are:
to be swallowed by the boom of fullest sound,
the agony & wonder of wanting the Beloved’s more
crisp break of a mere day off the year’s chanted yearnings,
intonations that we will never last
longer than a breath in the face of the infinite
to want to be pealed by the hour, to say & say
to invite the lightning by this thunderlust,
lure the cry of livening a shatter
near to feel the crack of the ampersand
organ in the vesper’s dusky light
to know the catastrophe to come
but nonetheless
ring & ring & ring & ring
[END]
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