Kendel Hippolyte
Coda
Coda
What is this, what is it, what is this sound?
Hovering through streets in perishing cities of the wasting world we’ve made - this buzzed uneasiness,
like a low crepitation of burnt paper blowing, black scraps of it fluttering overhead,
like the dark notes of a didgeridoo swarming out of the ground – this sound, this dirge
of bees.
The thick-electric-bristling-black-cloud of them
pauses over the jagged veins of breakening sidewalks,
over the brown crackling leaves in withering parks;
the wind disperses it; it resembles dried plucked petals of funeral wreaths
for a death that is still undergoing consummation.
The sound of bees widens - gradualizes downwards to their final silence
and ours. Their threnodies of global closure -
the coda of our cosmic possibilities.
This sound is … is … what this sound is …
Is a billion buzz-saws severing something from us.
What? They are severing their selves out of the cosmos.
Choosing to fly into the sun, a Sauteurs Leap upwards,
their frizzling wings falling back on us, a black drizzle, then a rain, then a soundless thunderstorm
of curses – on us now and on our unsucceeding generations.
How they fly wingless, only they can know,
clusters of them swarming from each almost-last refuge,
away from Earth, from Ovalea, from The Mother,
to each other, a cosmic coagulation of planetary flesh
swelling into a black bruise as we look up
to see a slight discolouration on the sun – only a moment –
then a flare of cleansing light. Fire.
And no great-grandchildren, and then no grandchildren
to tell of this, of us, what we did, what was …
