In light of Iran: “Politics is a matter of sorting things out
once and for all then after a time doing it again.”
……………………………………….………—Akbar McCarthy
Under the Capitol Dome
Carl Sandburg
There are those who speak of confusion today
as if yesterday there was order
rather than confusion.
There are those who point to confusion today
as though if given a chance
they could tomorrow transform it into order.
There are those who find benefits in confusion
and make it a labor of delight
to render any confusion more confounded.
There are those who expect today’s confusion
to be followed by another tomorrow,
the two confusions being different from each other.
The confusions of being born are followed
by the confusions of how to live
until a final moment when a stilled heart
holds release complete and absolute
from all former and earlier confusions.
When one confusions transforms itself into another
there has been a death and a birth
though the newborn confusion
becomes known only across time and silence.
When a confusion results
from seeing what is not all there
it is an identical twin of the confusion
to follow the hearing of what is not all there.
When a witness says
there was confusion in what he saw
and he can’t therefore be sure of what he saw,
he may be a strictly honest witness.
A fine sunrise or an elegant sunset
achieves moving colors and masses of changing light
in a properly organized confusion.
….The orderly marches
of the night stars and constellations
when looked at by powerful telescopes
…..hold flagrant and flaming confusions.
from: Harvest Poems 1910-1960; Harvest Books, 1960