Rebuke
Sept 25 2016


Magazines in glossy towers,
deftly massaged
into even rectangular blocks.
Face-up, spine out.

 Newspapers in every corner
in neat chronological order
going yellow with age. 

And the novels I stopped
when the going got tough
and those I never started;
dust-covered, dog-eared
book-marked.

The room is a stern mistress,
nodding her disapproval
at what went wrong.
A museum of best intentions
and things put off.

Because the world is too much with us;
its burden of words 
                                     ...and love 
                                                         ...and hurt.
If the interior lives
of the billions and billions
were conjured up in decibels
the sound would be unbearable,
disembodied screams
in the dead of night.

Even here, in seclusion
the words are a silent rebuke;
relentlessly piling-up
until they overflow.
So at best, I am a custodian,
trying to keep in order
this dark refuge.

Like a hoarder, whose home is filled
with treasures still unopened;
floors sagging
door wedged shut.
Who has nowhere left for himself,
except for the narrow aisles
between the piles of words.



I read a daily paper. I understand this is an anomaly these days, when most people (or certainly most young people) rely on curated Facebook feeds for their knowledge of current events. There are  magazines and highlighted articles sitting unread:  their presence silently rebukes me for my neglect. (Although since I now read everything in electronic form, there are no yellowing piles and over-flowing table tops. Just starred articles and more recent editions accumulating on my screen!)

Yet while I remain informed, bring to bear critical thought on crucial issues, and develop well-defended positions on everything, none of it matters!! One could argue being informed needs no more justification than its role as a vital act of basic citizenship. Nevertheless, while I read with such utter despair about atrocities by war criminals in Syria, fulminate about idiotic public policy and government waste, and rant about the marginalization of the singular issue of our generation -- climate change -- NOTHING CHANGES. I move from one topic to the next, smugly experience my self-righteous rightness, and then await the next day’s news.

So I think this  poem is about  information overload. But also about how too much information  becomes just noise. And also about how language has the power to elicit empathy. But at the same time, it distances and detaches, so that reading and commentary become a substitute for action.