It was worth understanding, while stacking
Up the generations of ignoble ancestors
With tobacco stores and branch office careers,
The backwoods preachers, tannery workers,
And petty sellers of immortal plastic things,
The slow tide of privileged white mediocrity
In which I invested neither shame nor pride,
That ritual sustained us, before and behind.
It was possible, all those generations, it may
Be possible yet, to be successfully enduring
While enduringly lacking success. The secret
Lay in conformity, just enough submission
By wallflowers to the demands of the dance.
In England, in New England, among the Seneca,
And in Quebec, none of us accomplished much
Except to leave further careful observants
Of unremarkable rituals to reflect. The way
Of the peasant is orbital, seasonal, full
Of tides, fat moons, perigees and apogees.
Ritual itself, whether feral, rural, or urban is
A kind of orbit, captured and drifting forever
So slowly away or in, for or towards calamity.
We got here because our lineages neither
Escaped the surly bonds of local gravity
Nor did their part to make sense of entropy.
If we convene, we convene to demonstrate
That the cyclical is the closest we can come
To genuine immortality, and that convention
Is the master plan of such periodicity. Again.
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