Republican and Democrat Are Contraries Without Progression

From Blake via Bly

[writers note: I said I would offer a poem. In the spirit of elections, in this very divisive time, a reminder of our shared destiny and the necessity of the other. I structured this like a poem, but substack word processing is rudimentary, like it’s the 80’s, and it takes the poem form and throws all the lines together as standard text paragraphs, so I had to put forward slashes in. I contacted substack about it but based on my experience I will hear back from them sometime next week, and the problem will not be resolved anytime soon if ever, so here it is, such as it is.]

Pols at war within/ As if to cleft a person down the middle/ Halved, would make them whole?

A regression, old age demented/ Child like still in presumptions of immortality/ Psyche warped too long lying to itself/ Heaping lie upon lie/ Building shining cities on palaver hills/ Foundations to privatize the moon and stars/ So vastly more distant than immediate relations/ Bridges we have let fall/ Out of spite and sheer hatred/ Yet self assured progress is eternal/ Universal law opposite gravity/ Though time is more like a wave/ A roller coaster of life and death/ A machine powered by chance and inevitability/ Like civilization, peak as empire/ Trough as collapse

Progress depends upon awareness/ Balance, wholeness, intention/ Riding time awake and alive/ And humble/ Because a body politic and a body/ Will live and will die/ To hasten that reckoning is folly/ Best to rejoice/ In the here, now and mundane/ With gratitude, to progress with joy/ To regress with dignity/ Two parties cycling ‘round the other/ As effortless as binary stars/ And as necessary