Kairos election
Every second is the straight gate through which the messiah might enter. —Walter Benjamin
It’s late on earth
The sour smell
of unloved things
haunts our days
Like light
through a wire screen
hope passes through all things
Time is not an empty bright hallway
with a single door
at the end
and events do not line up dumbly
like the beads of a rosary
What we call now is
eternally pregnant
with all that has
come before
The present holds
the entirety of the past
shakily in its hand
pulsing with redemption
The struggle for the past
has always already begun
as well as for the future
All who have been erased
cry out to us
Only a god can save us
Heidegger wrote
folding his Nazi suit
lovingly once more
back into its chest
without apologizing
while Benjamin sparked hope
in the past
firmly convinced (a suicide)
that even the dead will not
be safe if the enemy wins
The dead are not safe
and as long as they’re not
we are not
