Trumpestilence
Michael
J. Stern
University
of Oregon
Biography
Michael Stern is an Associate Professor in the Department of German and Scandinavian at the University of Oregon. He is the author of Nietzsche’s Ocean, Strindberg’s Open Sea and various articles on literature, film, and philosophy. He is currently finishing up a monograph entitled The Singing Socrates, and has begun a project called Conversations with African Philosophers.
+ (hat in the ring)
the penthouse the escalator he rode down
descended from a gilded nutshell that enclosed him.
unlike hamlet he was never visited by nightmares
consequently his ambitions never narrowed.
he imagined himself king of infinite space but lacked
any genius for hesitation any sense for the question.
a sinister cartoon he wore a dark suit a bright tie and a mask of
flashbulbs.
a thrasymachus of sorts rich unbound shouting down the experts.
now enclosed in the nutshell with him we descend into our own bad dreams.
++ (running backwards)
the truth of the matter will not come out it will not be said
it will not remain it will not be held born as it was from our
promise in ashes.
it pools inside a rhythm a fluctuation of mutual unfolding of shared enclosure
a sun sinking below the joint of sky and sea as daylight
recedes
as dilate eyes greet dusking light shapes move within the darkened
fold
of a common promise we tear blindly at our own garment.
born as we were from a bleeding the children of a primal
violence destined
to be
belated to take measure again
and again to a pregnancy without term.
having arrived late to our own inception we stumbled .
+++ (his ascension)
somewhere between a shadow and a thicket we fall.
thickly tripping like silent children of a tumble and a
tremble.
when we rise to speak again awakened there will be
a slow viscous rising like smoke rings waxing thinning and stretching
somehow still yet somehow somewhere
else. for these
days too
will pass they already recede towards another horizon
another joint fusing open sky to open sea. when we arrive
the angel of history will be waiting wondering how we could
in this time of trumpestilence ever think we have the right to forget.