Maelstrom: One Drop Makes the Whole World Kin

Anne Waldman

All the world is one, like an angry deity’s essence dropped in

the ocean

becoming monstrous: what happens Mumbai happens Paris

What happens Vicenza U.S. Base or Prodi, Kyoto Accord, XL

Pipeline

advanced warplanes to Japan—what happens? Egypt, Yemen,

Syria

NASA’s five space probes or Aurora Borealis where we study

shimmering light

What happens on the Lunar New Year

I want to know, Professor, are there names for these mercurial

moves?

A lexicon & vibration touch the complexity of gestural motion

What happened with Augustine & his mother in Ostia?

I want to know what happens Nicea 325 perhaps God creates

the world!

Let’s go back and check this out: Ex nihilio ardore/splendore

Europe still riding the pull of Zeus a nuclear reactor not

dismantled

Heads coming off in cruelest acts, unspeakable

And how that is part of your story too—flooding in

Mozambique,

in Morocco, in Indonesia a part of you all suffering a part of

you

What happens Rwanda, Darfur, Chad, Ukraine, glaciers

shrinking what happens

when carbon-capped bombs fall on Natanz? on Bushehr

What is the poet’s job out of numbed slumber?

Entering post-poet-modernity I gave my larynx a workout

Started chanting for the redemption of Irreparable

Om Ah Hum for the Year of the Shy but Cunning Metal

Rabbit,

Inshallah O Peace Brutal Year of the Wooden Horse

The Gentle Sheep Year O Help us Now, Shalom Ah Hum,

Shanti

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Copyright © 2019 Anne Waldman. Used with permission from the author.