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
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.