Marching Dilemmas

I close my eyes and
see blue patches
forming and wonder
where they’re taking me.

(This starts me off)

Lying naked in bed
and music,

harmonicas and past violins

singing blind in
spring

we wander down
Arabic roads
meandering as one

eye keeps tabs on science books –
the other constant

with people
eating spices,

making the whole
thing move.

Lebanese, Syrians, Moroccans (even Turks and Afghans) –

they’re all here
bristling, cleaning up
before service
begins and the great

white flood comes. Their restaurants
always a bangarang
of latest developments,

riding out the apogee
more or less
Intact to survive another day

un-burnt.

And the others
keep going
attacking the very heart of things
in the name of the
great single efficiency

always obscuring.

It isn’t ours nor really theirs anyway –
hoodwink to the final hour! –
And the loveliest of people
walks by this time covered this time not
a flummox of all sides

but to keep on –
that’s the rub.
Does it attenuate
to pick, to let

ourselves be taken?–

It seems better to live
in shadow,
in the in-between
of the force
of play
than to keep on.

But we keep on.