poem by Karen Chamisso

 

O Lockian beauties! Experience cannot alter

Nor time with its cannibal grin deface

Your monument to innocence

Where once wilderness made its howling claim!

 

As though Eden had never throbbed

Like a dream in our throats when we, blindfolded,

Grappled with each other’s shadows

Kissing until to the outermost pore

 

Of the spendthrift, bolted moment become flesh

Barring all paradises else. Heedless surrender

Of Caliban to Ariel, Ariel to Caliban -

This was the world well lost to video.

 

Replay and rewind endlessly return us

To the mashed landscapes of baby food.

Age will not sail us home. Over every venture

Hangs Peter Pan’s motto: death is another adventure.