Isaiah 43

I am making all things new! Or am trying to,

being so surprised to be one of those guys

who may be dying early. This is yet one more

earthen declaration, uttered through a better

prophet’s more durable mouth, with heart

astir. It’s not oath-taking that I’m concerned

with here, for what that’s worth— instead just a cry

from the very blood, a good, sound imprecation

to give the sickness and the shivering meaning.

Former things have not been forgotten,

but they have forgotten me. The dear, the sweet,

the blessed past, writes Bassani. Tongue is the pen.

Donning some blanket of decorousness

is not the prophet’s profession, not ever.

Not that I’ve tasted the prophet’s honey or fire:

I’m just a shocked, confounded fellow

who’s standing here, pumping the bellows

of his mellifluous sorrow. Yet sorrow’s the thing

for all prophets. Make a way in the wilderness,

streaming your home-studio-made recordings

from a personal wasteland. These are my thoughts.

I can’t manage the serious beard. My sackcloth

is the flannel shirt I’m wearing. But the short-circuited

months have whitened my hair, and it’s not

for nothing that Jeffrey calls me, with affectionate

mockery, the silver fox. It’s a prerequisite, finally—

being a marginal prophet, but a severe attention

to envisioned tomorrows must be present, too,

must be perceived as possible, audible, or followable.

There’s a hypothetically bright future for everything,

each wounded creature that is bitten, or bites.

And speaking of things overheard, you heard right:

if I have to go out, I am going to go out singing.