18 Theses, on the Philosophy of History, (poem), 2

Danger!

The past will come

upon us now

like a carbomb or

a trainwreck to the station.

What’s past must meet this future

that can never arrive

yet never be avoided.

While here we sit,

head forsaken In our bloody hands,

for all these countless disembodied angels

this dance of our unberable bodies!

There is a future, yes.

It will be torn from the debris of history

as if by hands beaten by fools

into a desperation

ticking in agony like all broken clocks.

“I will not despair, ” Walter writes and flees

the scourge of bullies.

“I will not despair.”

” Ich werde nicht verzweifeln.”

“I will not despair.”

“Je ne vais pas le désespoir.”

“I will not despair.”

                                               אני לא ייאוש

Not at this mountain-top

nor at the bottom of history’s dregs,

we will not despair,

not by war nor peace nor

at the sharp edge of this

morphine’s embrace:

i will not despair

not here in fascist Spain

nor in this Moscow of the torturers.

“I will not despair. I will not despair“.

Look, the train wreck approaches.

It carries your name on its forehead.

It carries danger in its veins.

It is a product of human history and its scourge.

In this last warm embrace,

“I could have learnt one lesson I had always known.

Redemption, my friend,

this voice that comes to greet me”

like a brother, crying out

from the stones.

Fucking redemption!

 

séamas carraher

 

Image:

Walter Benjamin in Bern (Switzerland),

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABenjamin_%C3%A0_Berne.png

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