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Donald Levering - The Night the Millennium Changed, |
each of us added two characters
to our names. This imbued us
with the prudence of Adam
and the insight of Eve. We lay
among windfallen apples and dreamed
that Satan had shed his disguise.
We presumed that the serpent
would lie down with the mongoose.
The Jew and the Hindu
with the Moslem. We thought
the Irish would defuse their Bibles.
We assumed that Mussolini
would fly from the gallows
to make our buses run on schedule,
that Ezra Pound would be empowered
to outlaw usury. That the Tutsi
would marry the Hutu.
We had faith that the Star of David
and the Swastika
would become interchangeable.
Some of us imagined the land mines
would turn into yams.
But the earth didn’t gape open
and swallow a bulldozer
for the millennium’s first victim.
The Stone Age mothers of Melanesia
didn’t learn Cobol overnight.
Their black skin didn’t turn white.
The missionaries didn’t get smallpox.
Jesus slept soundly in his tomb
right through it. The computers
scarcely noticed
the miserly meteor showers.
The tea leaves made the same
old predictions. The blueness
persisted in the sky
where the Geese of the Apocalypse
were seen winging south when it turned,
as if this were any other year.
Donald Levering is the author of several collections of poetry, including Horsetail (Woodley Press), Outcroppings From Navajoland (Navajo Community College Press), The Jack Of Spring (Swamp Press), Carpool (Tellus), and Mister Ubiquity (Pudding House Press). His most recent release is The Fast of Thoth (Pudding House).
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