Cycle’s End: A Ballad

No written sign in the world

can say impoverished—

there is not language enough

for this lack, for wording the loss

so as to do justice to the lost,

for giving them a channel to be found.

Forgiving the inventors of the wheel

while loathing the invention

is a start. Still the wheel breaks

every butterfly it can.

And the rest is learning to read

the signs in faces: this is not the language

of brokenness—break the cycle

before the cycle breaks you—but

of bridges.

Education, as architecture, is fatal

to the infrastructure of ignorance.

The bridge, once it is built,

is near impossible to burn.

Learn, then, from the list-makers,

the early-dawn organizers who heal under cover

of half-darkness before the world puts on

its social sleep.

Inattention will trail you

like a hound. Do not let it

overtake you—it will lead you

to the place where it was always so,

a place from which it is doubly difficult

to return.

It is never always so.

Always belongs to the past;

the future cannot claim it.

Learn, also, from the ones

beyond whose reach you put Learning:

who, you imagine,

were never made for it.

Accept what they show you;

do not twist it into what you believe

you were made to see. You,

because you are here, because you

bothered to look twice, are made

to reflect them, the people

who find no mirror in the blind

eyes of passersby.

For those once on the wheel

who escaped it, have pronounced compassion.

They are forever glancing

over their shoulders at the lives

left rotating, the loved ones

whose fortunes they could not secure

in the trial of saving themselves.

They are travelers in a world

as brave as it is new, their courage

unlike your definition of it and unmatched

by whatever you may offer.

Do not weep when you read

their stories. Your tears

redeem no one, not even

yourself.

Tears are not labor:

they are shiny

but not substantive.

You may sleep, you may go blind

if you wish. That is the way. But,

if you wish to learn, your teachers

must be those whose lives depended,

or still do, on keeping a relentless vigil.

The force of change lies dormant in you—

only by following the example of the forgotten

can you remember

and awaken it.