The Albany Poetry Workshop
Forum I: Poem for the End of the Century
Mark Clement
The Written Page
With no consideration
of their collective actions
I watched my parents work the world,
unconscious stewards that hid
from those three dark days
that follow every thinning moon.
They did not see the leaf's fall
reveal the certain root
or that green sun in the soil
that fires the flower.
They did not see the next page
left for me to live, left for me
to divine out of failed faith,
out of ancient apocalyptic signs.
I play out their dark desires,
the anguished fires of creation,
as the page curls, as the apocalypse
unfurls right before my eyes.
I and they have written cold
black ink that cannot fade
fast enough so that my children
are left with only the mystery
of that certain root.
November, 1998
Mark Clement's questions:
1. Is the issue of 'inheritance' clear?
2. Do the metaphors appropriately reflect 'spiritual poverty' ?
3. Is this poem reflective of our time?