AS WE ENTER THE 3rd MILLENNIUM
As we enter the 3rd millennium
roots reach down like gnarled hands
boats rise up on waves like ballerinas
buildings bloom like flower gardens
skies turn purple then gray
then yellow-gold then white as a sheet
for a split second on everyone’s eyelids
and astounding things take place in them
saith Tiresias
sitting full weight on a miniature city of sugar in
robes of flame or flame retardant
cerulean satin
his long dark face an enigma in a space where
everything else is openly plain and simple
birds fly through slack telephone wires making their
casual auguries first
one direction then veering off at an angle into another
ants carry and are carrying on as usual
unmindful of the year’s embrasure
which may be a new word I’m coining because I
can’t think of one momentous or
all-encompassing enough radical in its
edgenessness right at the
razor’s edge of things metamorphosing into
entities rare and strange at the
sound of the millennial bell or at least the
wooden sound of the clapper inside the
bell since the reverberations of the glassy brass
bell itself will resound all the
way through the 3rd millennium
to the fourth
when wingéd horses may be as commonplace as cars or
thought transportation eyesight itself
able to teleport us to far-off places and
straunge strondes as Chaucer that
early second millennium
observer of human foibles would say and his
strange words tumbling through the lengthy and
wildly troubled centuries to us still
11/25
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KALEIDOSCOPE
Muscular black South Africans in silhouette against real bronze
sunrise
backdrop turning white
Caribbean martial arts acrobats doing multiple back flips and wild-leggéd
windmill twists
Red Square in Moscow thronged by thousands of cheering Russians
in front of
rust-red Kremlin onion domes swirling like tops
snowflakes flying upward
huge face of coconut-shell-colored Hawaiian boy with radiating yellow
grass
headdress smiling
equally radiant teeth black eyes like soft black moons in a flashing
sky
Fiji Islander coming out of the sea of night with red torch held
high to light a
brazier fashioned
out of equally red wood shavings
Chinese President formal and tight-smiled in stiff black raincoat
pressing
a button on a little metal box igniting Taoist calligraphic fireworks
of mysterious
import
hundreds of lighter-than-air lantern balloons pale yellow in the
black night
let go slowly rising at angles afloat in midnight Taiwanese sky
drummers in black shirts and fringed white leggings stepping gracefully
over
their
drums while cracking drumhead wooden sides with sticks in head-tossing
happy
synchronized rhythms
hundred-deep choruses of white-shirted Sri Lankan youths holding
lurid red
lotus flowers
dark outlined almond-eyed faces solemnly smileless though singing
Strauss waltzes in Vienna great white skirts spiraling lithe white
bodies
in ballet one-two-three formations
Before Argentina waterfall cascading children’s voices in
Spanish and Quechua
singing
los niños de dos mil under a brilliant turquoise
sky
plainsong Estonian ghost-figures shrouded in the snow with long
white masks and wide-jagged-wing’d birdmen carrying
tall white crosses under blinding silvery showers of sparks
London Tower illuminated gory red by the flames of a giant beacon
ignited by
a seemingly stunned Queen Elizabeth II in her plain housewife’s
red overcoat and so-so pillbox hat as if out on a supermarket shopping
trip
for a box of Tetley tea-bags
Acropolis Greek chorus and orchestra men and women in florid blue
robes
among pillars of the ruined temple to Athena
on its illuminated mountaintop bathed in cobalt blue light
Palestinians with cyclone lamps tiny orange flames inside convex
glass domes in
Bethlehem
singing Halleluiah over and over
green fireworks and 2,000 white doves released simultaneously into
the sky
chrysanthemums of light bursting to Thus Sprach Zarathustra
bombast and
thrill
pyramids at Giza Egyptian civilization’s Seventh Millennium
long lines of men in blue gabardine business suits each with jackal-head
Anubis
masks
black silhouettes of pointed snouts and pointy ears
carrying torches and striding with god-like ominous mystery and
determination
Nelson Mandela solitarily lighting a candle from his 27 years prison
cell on
Robben Island
carrying it down a corridor of nakedly leaping ecstatic dancers
to hand it to the newly elected black President of South Africa
Helsinki Finland chiming midnight with 2,000 flickering candles
of hope
Shinto wedding at dawn on Japanese beach with hundreds of drummers
banging
drums
bride in white kimono groom in black robes reciting marriage vows
in unison
scanning down Japanese vertical calligraphy as the rosy first-day-of-millennium
sunrise rises
Swiss fire sculpture burning hot red licks in the still-night chill
black sky of
Switzerland
flame wheels slowly turning flames flickering from circular rims
balletic ice-skating folk dance Denmark’s Tivoli Gardens lake
frozen over
ladies in pink tutus lads in black breeches white socks
dancing pendulously back and forth hip and hop jolly fussy and folksy
Eiffel Tower illuminated rocket in takeoff position on earth’s
brave curvature
glittering disks at the different levels spinning around
then wheels of fireworks rotating up from the bottom
then spray wings flying out from the tower’s sides in leaping
rainbow arcs
as if breast-stroking through the sky spectacularly outwards
Brandenberg Gate searchlights back and forth black leather German
Metallica
rock music
midnight bell-ringing Spain’s Puerto del Sol fireworks display
on the red-glowing
roof of the
solid Greek architecture portals of government
Saint Peter’s Square pop singers with microphones tuxedos
and formals
His Holiness the Pope at his Plexiglas lectern
shakily delivering his millennial homily waving his hand and looking
out
strangely
at the assembled masses
amplified violinist on a roof in Prague playing Fiddler on the
Roof with
seemingly
no trace of irony
Polonaise in Poland by famous Chopinesque pianist
great black grand piano covered in insulating puffy white balls
of sheep’s wool
like
mushrooms sprouting
Easter Island dancers in skimpy loincloths muscular limbs in the
long shadows
of those
giant buttress-nosed sculpture heads tilted sightlessly heavenward
Amazon Indians on the tangly banks of the Amazon
short brown bare-breasted ladies and black-haired shamans splashily
body-painted
doing a circle dance round and round each other
praying to God and asking humankind to
please preserve the rainforest
live in peace
blue jewel in space
singing its heart out
1/1/2000
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