The Second Part of Endlessness

Symbol of the times: that nobody cared, that everybody erased from their heads, no less than their hearts, the question of meaning.  Someone said 

Things are becoming disjointed....   There is 

No more standard.  He was right, but he wasn’t right 
The way he sauntered away from me, all perky and seemingly with good cheer.  To not resent the man 

It was impossible.  Still, he taught me a thing or two about the times: that it is deteriorating, the decay 

Is coming quick, that there is no reversing 
The trouble inherent in living as a strange being, 
Being stranger than the strangest thing, 
That when we tell the story to our posterity 
They will laugh at us with solemn laughter. 

That there will be a saint of a woman who will cry all the same for the world, that the world will not listen to her despite her tears and lamentations, that she will be decried as a madwoman with mad complaints. 

You believed it because you had to believe; because there was no option but to believe in the erasure of belief.  Everything has become 

Disjointed for no other reason than reason itself, 
Its demands have grown weary of themselves, 
Ate themselves up alive, so that the only thing that survived were a few slender remnants of human and biological prosperity: 

Bipedal form to stand up tall and look out at the distance; 
Sharp eyes for that distance too, eyes that could discern 
Minutest detail and degrees of difference of qualities 
Unseen by fellow creatures; 
Uncreaturely creation of meaning and surprise 
From out of the cranium like yarn 
From a spinning wheel; 
Slit of the mouth opening wide, showing the teeth 
Or staying slit and grinning like stupidity itself 
At the lack of a course to take 
Through the mossy paths of history; 
Fingers that point or fingers that play unanchored notes 
On the piano of time, bowing before the show is done, 
Tilting the ears, those precious holes 
Towards the empty auditorium 
Where no one is applauding, 
The seats are empty, all of them, not a ticket was sold. 

We were told to be hopeful yet, to not give up or give in 
Just yet, to have patience for the unendurable, 
But there was only one among us who could stand 
Bipedal, mouth agape just a bit, fingers pointing 
But not in accusation 
Toward the hopeless hopefulness of the horizon: 
He was neither elderly nor young but somewhere in between, 
He seemed as full of youth as he was 
Full of old age, 
As full of wisdom and insight as he was 
Full of the ignorance of a damaged or undeveloped brain. 

He said And this is only the beginning, 
  a long first chapter of a first part, 
Of everything falling apart, the start of a long untellable tale 
Of when things stall on their course, or depart away 
From the course they had been taking, 
Or like a deranged cart mistake the lines of the track 
For a circle and take the curve round and round. 

Part two, he said, will be just as long, 
We will have trouble finding singers for the broken song, 
Whether they are dead or their voices cracked, 
Our choir-benches will always be slow-fillers, 
Our unpaid conductor will go home every night 
To tell his husband how terrible it all is, 
Waving his hands to the silence.  And it will go on 
And on it will go on and on it will go 
On and on like so, some of us alive still, outside 
  of where the music is happening, will 
Try to go back to former times where meaning was 
Thick but cruel, who cares, 
Others of us will be more daring and, without the least vision, 
Throw ourselves into newness like children thrown into the world 
Without the slightest vision, without even being asked 
About vision or expectation or particular fears or worries 
The trip might inspire, what considerations 
He or she, or the genderless one 
Would like to express. 

Then there are the last, and this is still the second part 
Of many parts to come, and each just as long 
As the one preceding it or needlessly, cruelly longer, 
The last who attempt something altogether different, 
Though they are neither stronger nor more quick-witted 
  than the other experimenters before them: 

They will stop 
Looking for meaning altogether, 
That sun will set for them, 
They will watch that sunset, 
The colors and how they fade away in brilliance, 
All together this last band of the second part, 
Its chapters alone filled with epics and short and long dramas 
  stacked upon one another in layers, 
They will stand like old animals used to standing 
And look out 
But for nothing, or at least they won’t ask of it 
That it be something, or anything saving, 
A healing balm for everything; 
They will look out with a grin on their mouths 
As though they know nothing, 
As though they never wanted to know.... 

Keep in mind that this is only the second part of endlessness, 

The man said this and stuttered on 
That we are not finished yet, that there is more to come, 
Some of it devastating and some of it tolerable, 
Some of it with such obvious joy, 
But there will be a long time of it, 
Endless rounds of the same, and the same as different 
And the different as the same and leveled down, 
Rounds tracing over rounds 
Where, though we wish for the static, 
  some dramatic resolution where the eyes may see every detail, its details are always all jumbled together 
By con-fusion, and meaning too, 
We gawked and shook our heads and sighed and understood and some of us sorrowed and some of us rejoiced and some of us made as though to kill ourselves and some of us felt for once healthy and sure of the days and some of us were racked with guilt and some of us were spoiled and, alert now like one who loves a sequel, even if it wraps the first installment 
  of gold in crinkled tinfoil, even if it defames the past, 
Listened on to the man with his fairyless tale, enrapt.