What It Is

I warned you that this website would wander around the story of creating a new novel, analogous to the peregrinations of Leopold Bloom. Context is all, currently a nexus of a world epidemic and a world-wide reaction to an emblematic brutality.

While this goes on, writers' write. About what's going on, or not. What it may signify. Where we might be headed--chaos and violence, or loving peace and loving people and bringing them together in righteousness, (as paraphrased from Hillel). Nobody recently that I know of has expressed our hopes so well as Richard Blanco.

Say This Isn’t the End

by Richard Blanco

The Atlantic June 7, 2020

... say we live on, say we’ll forget the masks
  that kept us from dying from the invisible,
  but say we won’t ever forget the invisible
  masks we realized we had been wearing
  most our lives, disguising ourselves from
  each other. Say we won’t veil ourselves again,
  that our souls will keep breathing timelessly,
  that we won’t return to clocking our lives
  with lists and appointments. Say we’ll keep
  our days errant as sun showers, impulsive
  as a star’s falling. Say this isn’t our end …

... say I’ll get to be as thrilled as a boy spinning
  again in my barber’s chair, tell him how
  I’d missed his winged scissors chirping
  away my shaggy hair eclipsing my eyes,
  his warm clouds of foam, the sharp love
  of his razor’s tender strokes on my beard.
  Say I’ll get more chances to say more than
  thanks, Shirley at the checkout line, praise
  her turquoise jewelry, her son in photos
  taped to her register, dare to ask about
  her throat cancer. Say this isn’t her end …

... say my mother’s cloudy eyes won’t die
  from the goodbye kiss I last gave her, say
  that wasn’t our final goodbye, nor will we
  be stranded behind a quarantine window
  trying to see our refracted faces beyond
  the glare, read our lips, press the warmth
  of our palms to the cold glass. Say I won’t
  be kept from her bedside to listen to her
  last words, that we’ll have years to speak
  of the decades of our unspoken love that
  separated us. Say this isn’t how we’ll end …

... say all the restaurant chairs will get back
  on their feet, that we’ll all sit for another
  lifetime of savoring all we had never fully
  savored: the server as poet reciting flavors
  not on the menu, the candlelight flicker
  as appetizer, friends’ spicy gossip and rich,
  saucy laughter, sharing entrées of memories
  no longer six feet apart, our beloved’s lips
  as velvety as the wine, the dessert served
  sweet in their eyes. Say this is no one’s end …

... say my husband and I will keep on honing
  our home cooking together, find new recipes
  for love in the kitchen: our kisses and tears
  while dicing onions, eggs cracking in tune
  to Aretha’s croon, dancing as we heat up
  the oven. Say we’ll never stop feasting on
  the taste of our stories, sweet or sour, but
  say our table will never be set for just one,
  say neither of us dies, many more Cheers!
  to our good health. Say we will never end …

... say we’ll all still take the time we once
  needed to walk alone and gently through
  our neighborhoods, keep noticing the Zen
  of anthills and sidewalk cracks blossoming
  weeds, of yappy dogs and silent swing sets
  rusting in backyards, of neat hedges hiding
  mansions and scruffy lawns of boarded-up
  homes. Say we won’t forget our seeing
  that every kind of life is a life worth living,
  worth saving. Say this is nobody’s end …

... or say this will be my end, say the loving
  hands of gloved, gowned angels risking
  their lives to save mine won’t be able to
  keep me here. Say this is the last breath
  of my last poem, will of my last thoughts:
  I’ve witnessed massive swarms of fireflies
  grace my garden like never before, drawn
  to the air cleansed of our arrogant greed,
  their glow a flashback to the time before
  us, omen of Earth without us, a reminder
  we’re never immune to nature. I say this
  might be the end we’ve always needed
  to begin again. I say this may be the end
  to let us hope to heal, to evolve, reach
  the stars. Again I’ll say: heal, evolve, reach
  and become the stars that became us—
  whether or not this is or is not our end.

RICHARD BLANCO was selected by President Obama as the fifth inaugural poet in U.S. history; he is the youngest and the first Latino, immigrant, and gay person to serve in such a role. Born in Madrid to Cuban exile parents and raised in Miami, he is the author of memoirs and many collections of poetry, including his most recent, How to Love a Country.