Venice masks

Sunday 29 August 2021

So, faith is certain - John Robert Lee

So, faith is certain of tomorrow’s epiphany
but how to meet the apocalyptic moment of now
under fallen colonnades of the Presidential palace
tent cities of cholera and rape and empty-bellied children

the recurring decimation of mud in the kitchen
friends going to dementia, decrepitude and tumours
and in honest mirrors, the apparent dysfunctions,
slipping names, insomnia, gathering pill boxes

and out of reach, envied flirtations with perfect lips,
sloe eyes and teasing hips. Add inescapable
anxieties, dead-end jobs that pay bills,
no prizes, no awards, the country grown strange and foreign,

citizens mocking the devalued currency of art—
so, how to meet the apocalyptic hour
though faith is certain of the promised parousia?

John Robert Lee (born c.1955) St Lucia

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