GREETING THE YEAR 2000, WITH RESPECT
By Janine Pommy Vega

Glancing back at the millennium we are leaving,
I see a cannon roll out into the dust
of a tiny war in the patch of sun
in a store window
on the Lower East Side
Noise, blood, suffering, even the animals
to take part; no one is winning


Great theaters of carnage
bright science yoked to bleak
military arsensals, kids are killing kids
people are torn between nationalism
and compassion, and the entire human species
is hurling itself headlong off the edge.


And he laid hold on the dragon, the old serpent,
and bound her for a thousand years
and cast her into the abyss
and shut it and sealed it over her
that she should deceive the nations no more
until the thousand years be finished;
after this she must be loosed a little while.*


She must be loosed a little while?
How little a while?
Lording it over the beasts in the field,
the trees in the forest, the air, the water,
with the rapt egocentric stance that nature
is the devil, we have been suppremely free
to disrespect whomever we choose.


I think of the lovely Lilith,
tossing her hair as she leaves the abyss
the unbound fire in every atom
she steps out into a vacant lot
in the Southeast Bronx, where to dis
somebody is to face down a handgun


A serpent curls among the streets
of the world, a naked energy
climbs our spine and gazes from our eyes
Don't cut the trees, don't blaze more trails
across the mountains, leave a little
wildness for the next inheritors,
with respect.


Monte Alban for a thousand years
was a sacred city and civilization
of peace. With plentiful fields of corn
, the people were free to serve and adorn
their temple. In synchronicity
with the earth
they derived their names from what they did.


Let us go out and greet the new
century, said Seraphita, Balzac's angel,
and the icy fjords cracked and melted
the bells rang wildly
With great respect, with great love
she said, and the energy
crackled across the sky like lightning.


Look at the serpent
curling through the green woods
spiralling up the hills from the flat land,
and greet the new millennium with complicity
for the unchained nature in the earth,
the air, the water,
the snake undulating up our spines
and the dragon in the stars.


* Revelations 20; 2-4

(Willow, NY, January 1, l994)

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FEBRUARY THAW
By Janine Pommy Vega

The birds are coming back
and with them, the old longing
for wet seeds, sleek skin, the moist earth
reaching up with bare arms,
and mine among them


the birds
congregated in the hemlocks
are not just chattering
but the first mighty chorus
of return


the body hums and trills
with each wisp of cloud, each
feathered wing and starry catkin
dropped on the snow, in the advent
of my own year


I clear away the entrance in the tree
to the animal cave
clean the entrance of raggedy wet leaves
crystal snow
clear the entrance for easy access


and I ask myself,
what hole is this?
The ear, the drum,
the tunnel to the psyche,
the vagina?


A sun harvest
creaks and knocks on the wood
above me. I am the surface
and underground cave
I am the thaw and the cold snap
and the thaw again


With their peeping and piping
the tiniest birds
have returned with their indomitable
song, with their small happy
voices, to the light

the wind combs the hillside
for dead branches, bodies at rest
and winter returns
implacable wind, dead leaves scoot
over the snow like frightened animals


but the green shoot thrusting through the ice
is strongest
the wind the snow the cold
can slow her, put her down,
but they cannot stop her


From the dream church where I knelt
and knew
I could never be separate
from what I love, these tears
in the snow


celebrate return
not the mind or the will
or the heart,
but something
singing with the crowd in the hemlocks


flowing with water under the ice
in globules, like amoebas
migrating over rocks to the pools below
and no matter how long I have left
on the earth, I have loved it here.


(Flanks of Mt. Tremper, Willow, NY, February 5, l993.)

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