Fog In The Black Pines

(At C. Kushner’s in East Hampton)

Everyone I know has given up
Or lost their faith,
Or renounced their dreams,
And grown indifferent,
In a hundred different ways,
To everything but their symptoms.

We just can’t get over being alone.
No matter what precautions we take:
When we need to hear, there’s only silence.
When we need to touch, there’s no one there.

Awake, long past midnight,
I step out to watch the fog.
Watching the fog roll in is like observing the pieces
Of an accident come together.
You see, but can’t prevent, the imminent disaster.
Not that it matters one way or another
What we do or why we do it.
Irrelevance has become part of our fate

There’s nothing more to it.
We’ve been dulled by necessity
And so dully stand by,
As the inevitable — it is always “The Inevitable” —
Determines what will be.
And what will be is always regrettable.
Things — laws, beliefs, even appearances — change
Without bothering to apologize or explain.

A new magician assumes the place of the last
And with a flourish pulls from his hat
A little more of this, a little less of that.
Until even the most incredulous admit
It’s simply foolish to resist.

And so each in turn blanches and falls prey
To the most popular illusion of all
The one that leaves us in laughter and in tears
By proving we are right to fear
Everything that’s far and everything that’s near.