Intimations of the Next World

18.

Pompeii was buried
under ash in just 2 days;
the Paricutín
appeared 1 day in a field
in Michoacan, erupted

belching boulders and
buried a church up to its
bell towers. Silence
is a page of history
written just after the fact

and continuing
through this moment in which past
becomes the future.
10 years ago in New York
an ideological

sleight-of-hand reduced
the twin towers to rubble,
and still no one can
determine for sure under
which shell the pea is hidden.

38 years have
passed since Pinochet's planes bombed
La Moneda on
orders from Kissinger and
Nixon, when Allende's skull

erupted in an
AK-47 blast
of ideas still
marching, alive in the streets
of Santiago, Chile.

The state of siege still
prevailing in Indian
Country has not yet
silenced the prediction of
Chief Seattle that the white

man's time of decay,
the implosive finale
to his exemption
from the common destiny
will arive. Will he survive?