The Bigots
By Laurie Keim
1.
When the bigots come for them, they come for us,
The bigot, who came for the bigot itself, was cracked
As glass might crack, under traumatic extremes,
And the bigot, always at cross-purposes, like a swan
Without a wing, a stork without a compass, a grudge
Without a graceful tender, just parrots,
Colourless parrots, all repetition, all drinking
From the same blossom, without fragrance, without
Much sweetness, a grey tree in a burnt-out landscape.
2.
The bigots belong to the school of pickled satisfaction.
In lieu of a centre of gravity, trying to lift themselves
By brutal force, to levels cruel, shrill and obvious.
Deep below the earth are internal streams,
Where thought must echo to be heard, and cascades
Percolate the surface, with the spring of everything.
The bigot hates internal streams, sub terra forms
Of self-possession, intelligence dangled on a string,
Rather, they like the sound of drums and guns and things.
3.
A pot, an ancient lacquered pot, eventually
Becomes crazed, and like the root of ancient trees,
The cracks break through the noble layer of intent,
And yet, overall, an instant of imagination holds,
And the real is shocked by such discipline, by art
Arresting time, diverting it, as only samples can.
One description, ordering one moment, for oneself,
Browsing the codes of description, existing between
One mind, intending good, for more minds, to extend.
4.
So singular, the task, the imaginative one,
Stolen from the real and invested entirely with possible
Mind-scapes, somersaulting kisses of mind passion,
Of streams running uphill, of abstract certainties,
Horrors of fate internal, unreal personal pain
Broken and brokered, by vectors of beauty,
These moments, when the world is unstill, and remains
Both dynamic with stillness and portending change,
This is what the bigot can’t stand. Open horizons of will.
You can read more by Dr Laurie Keim on his blog.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
