Stephen Dunn: Allegory of the Cave, When the Revolution Came, Landscape at the End of the Century

Allegory of the Cave

He climbed toward the blinding light
and when his eyes adjusted
he looked down and could see

his fellow prisoners captivated
by shadows; everything he had believed
was false. And he was suddenly

in the 20th century, in the sunlight
and violence of history, encumbered
by knowledge. Only a hero

would dare return with the truth.
So from the cave’s upper reaches,
removed from harm, he called out

the disturbing news.
What lovely echoes, the prisoners said,
what a fine musical place to live.

He spelled it out, then, in clear prose
on paper scraps, which he floated down.
But in the semi-dark they read his words

with the indulgence of those who seldom read:
It’s about my father’s death, one of them said.
No, said the others, it’s a joke.

By this time he no longer was sure
of what he’d seen. Wasn’t sunlight a shadow too?
Wasn’t there always a source

behind a source? He just stood there,
confused, a man who had moved
to larger errors, without a prayer.

When the Revolution Came

When the revolution came we were lounging at home.
They were suddenly dancing in Prague
and we were setting the table, forks on the left,
knives on the right. All our categories were old.
We should have been making love when he Wall
came down. We should have been turning a phrase.
When the revolution came it was the widening of a crack,
the lifting of gray. The tyrants just stepped down.
Some apologized. History turned in its enormous grave.
When the revolution came we were wearing
the work boots of the miner, the downy vest
of the longshoreman, thinking of style.
When the revolution came we were counting
our deprivations as only the full-bellied can.
Walesa raised his hands in triumph. Our throats
tightened. East Berliners strolld into the land
of commerce; our throats tightened again.
Were we thinking of ourselves when the revolution
came? And did we feel a little smug?
It was a cold December when the century changed,
colder for some. It was not yet Christmas,
not yet Romania, that harsh gift, blood-soaked,
its past opened up. Every year we promised
to want a little less, and always failed.
When the revolution came we watched the insistence
of crowds, almost free enough to become us.

Landscape at the End of the Century

The sky in the trees, the trees mixed up
with what’s left of heaven, nearby a patch
of daffodils rooted down
where dirt and stones comprise a kind
of night, unmetaphysical, cool as a skeptic’s
final sentence. What this scene needs
is a nude absentmindedly sunning herself
on a large rock, thinks the man fed up
with nature, or perhaps a lost tiger,
the maximum amount of wildness a landscape
can bear, but the man knows and fears
his history of tampering with everything,
and besides to anyone who might see him
he’s just a figure in a clearing
in a forest in a universe
that is as random as desire itself,
his desire in particular, so much going on
with and without him, moles humping up
the ground near the daffodils, a mockingbird
publishing its cacaphonous anthology,
and those little Calvinists, the ants,
making it all the more difficult
for a person in America
to close his office, skip to the beach.
But what this scene needs are wisteria
and persimmons, thinks the woman
sunning herself absentmindedly on the rock,
a few magnificent words that one
might want to eat if one were a lover
of words, the hell with first principles,
the noon sun on my body, tempered
by a breeze that cannot be doubted.
And as she thinks, she who exists
only in the man’s mind, a deer grazes
beyond their knowing, a deer tick riding
its back, and in the gifted air
mosquitos, dragonflies, and tattered
mute angels no one has called upon in years.