Gods Against Monkeys, Zion, 16 October 2017

Life was mostly one long conversation
With the echoes of others' voices, the voices
Out of print, and myself. No one listening in,
Not to the substantial, extended things,
Just that internal back and forth, sometimes
Projected onto the screen and read back
Again. Possibly, that was ordinary, possibly
Just something uniquely wrong with me.
Who knows how much or how little anyone
Suffers? I was never good with the details,
The names of plants and animals, the vivid
Similes for the living and not living cogs
Of the world, the right names some stitched
Like exquisitely bespoke masks to things.
I paddled more in the weird concreteness
Of piled abstractions, the ways that words
Referring to nothing tactile became objects.
I understood Kumin’s useless angels better
Than her horses and goats, her old dentists
And weather reports, all helpful things. Once
I thought I knew how to be helpful myself.
I had, briefly, a benefactor and an idea
For him to benefact. He wanted to know
How to make greedy young corporate things
Straight out of top-flight business schools
Behave like ethical beings. I told him
I believed the correct analogy was aviation
And the discipline of flying by instruments.
Humans, I said, are no better fit for giant
Organizations than they are for clouds
And barrel-rolling jet planes. In the cockpit
We recognize that while some pilots may
Have keener eyesight, stronger stomachs,
More experienced instincts than others,
None has the neurology trustworthy enough
To prevent fatal mistakes. We train them
Ruthlessly to trust their instruments, not
What their inner ears may be whispering.
The same should be done for those climbing
The heights of multinational organizations.
We place entirely too much faith in character
To shape appropriate decision making. Sure,
Some individuals may have sturdier instincts
Than others, but no more trust a conscience
Than trust an ear. Give them the heuristics
And train them to listen only to them. He,
My benefactor, nodded, but he wasn’t
Listening to me, and why should he be?
I woke up in the dark of the next to the last
Likely night of my life having dreamed vividly
Of things no longer vivid or even existing
For me, including those days of sure beliefs.
At the lip of my own nonexistence I schemed
New ways of discovering lost things, plotted
Blue sky projects such as gathering the best
Of evolutionary anthropologists, geneticists,
Archaeologists, and the like to jointly hunt
Down the exact location of the last common
Population of earliest modern human beings,
The mother village of everyone living.
I dreamed, moonlit and sunlit, these sorts
Of silly, unachievable dreams, instead
Of dreaming about what I knew would be
The most terribly, vividly alive moment
Of final awareness for me, that moment
After which life would be done with me.
I was embarrassed, talking only to myself
And my out-of-print imaginary beings,
Each one of us our own prisoner and chains.
I knew that I should have died sooner, should
Have made preparations, should not have
Lived so selfishly, as if there were no
Tomorrow and there would keep on being no
Tomorrow every morning endlessly, no
Tomorrow ever at all without me. I knew,
And yet I kept on, shamelessly and dreaming,
Knowing that at the hour of my death, my
Daughter would begin to absorb me.