Now Green, the City

“New oaks poke out below us in the street, where water runs around the lopped-off feet of some historic general whose head the children painted red.”

Image by Denny Muller

Image by Denny Muller

Surrealist Prophecies #12

The twelfth and last in a sequence of surrealist prophecies written using the divinatory technique of automatic writing (with subsequent revision). The theme of the sequence is the collapse of our global civilization due to uncontrollable climate change, leading to a mass rejection of both faith and reason and the re-enchantment of our world among the ruins of our failed creations. Some of the poems in the sequence are set before the Fall and portray the spiritual and emotional dilemma of our current crisis. Some describe the Fall itself, and the strange changes in thought and perception that will be needed if any are to survive a world in which humanity has been radically de-centered. Some describe the world to come, a world newly alive with gods and spirits yet free of all dogma or fixed belief – a world of beauty and strange magic.

The twelfth and final prophecy portrays the world to come, the first generation of the new society. Nature has reclaimed the city, yet people still live there. The world they are building is egalitarian, close to nature and close to the gods. The broken fragments of the old world are all around, shattered statues incorporated into a new mythology. The few who remember what they once represented will never tell.

Now Green, the City

Now green, the city is a nest of vines

Twined-up like snakes

And climbing toward the stars

Through open windows

Up the walls of banks

As if to offer thanks.

 

On elephantine branches, in the night,

We gather close

To hear each other sing.

We have no priest.

We have no sacred king.

Our songs are songs that

Everyone can sing.

 

New oaks poke out below us in the street

Where water runs

Around the lopped-off feet  

Of some historic general

Whose head

The children painted red.

 

They know him as The Giant, and believe

He came to eat our flesh

And crack our bones

Before our singing turned his flesh to stone

And left him down there,

Broken and alone.

 

The moon comes out.

We shout in wordless praise

And hold each other close beneath its rays

While someone pours an offering of ale

And tells the glorious tale.

 

Now green, the city grows,

And like the leaves

Our children grow.

And no one ever grieves

For who The Giant was or what he did.

 

If there are any left here who could tell

They keep that secret well.


Christopher Scott Thompson

Christopher Scott Thompson is an anarchist, martial arts instructor, devotee of Brighid and Macha, and a wandering exile roaming the earth. Photo by Tam Zech.

Christopher Scott Thompson

Christopher Scott Thompson is an anarchist, martial arts instructor, devotee of Brighid and Macha, and a wandering exile roaming the earth. Profile photo by Tam Zech.

https://noctiviganti.wordpress.com/
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