Unperceptive Who Believe Poem by gershon hepner

The unperceptive who believe
in magic will be thrilled,
but such beliefs will not relieve
the ones whose hearts are filled
with premonitions that are darker
than magic of the winner,
facing futures that are starker
than hell in which a sinner
believes he must remain forever,
elections mere rehearsal
for correction that will never
bring to a reversal
the cycle that no wizard’s wand
turn, like a pumpkin coach,
towards a better time beyond
past failures’ sad reproach.
Those who believe in the deceptive
deserve praise that’s half-hearty,
while disbelievers more perceptive
will rain upon their party.
We all have been manipulated
by our belief in magic:
reality, it must be stated,
awaits, and will be tragic,
because there are no more solutions,
and votes cannot be wands
that liberate all Lilliputians
whose markets are their bonds.

Inspired by Barack Obama’s victory in the election yesterday, after reluctantly voting for a hapless underdog and his unqualified Vice-Presidential nominee, and by lines from Mary Jo Bang’s poem “In the Present and Probable Future, ” in the Op-Ed page of the NYT on Novermber 5,2008. The poem ends thus:
What does it mean to have a point of view? What does it mean
to have a notable achievement? To succeed in representing the nuances
of a determinate activity? Listen: however events turn out, if we want to
we can continue to see the moon as an outburst of lyric, a vision of John Keats
And his friends, but still we have the battle to fight. How many more days
will be there? The unperceptive will be busy believing in magic: crop circles,
the unmanipulated image, definitions that defy definition. Others
will take at face value the less favorable consequences of both cynicism
and commercialization. The latter will say the flock is simply an assemblage,
an obsessive presence looking down on the building
where someone sits predicting the landslide rate. Long after we are gone
we can say we were here. We were working, wittingly or not,
towards the eventual erosion of places ground down and fought over,
especially in the literal sense — exploitation and industrial damage.
Nothing is lost. If anything, we gain experience. There will be that
unsullied moment, down to the last detail, when the acquired interview
and other quaint signs of demise will speak about us to the flood and the fire.


11/5/08