The Knicknackery Issue Two - 2014 | Page 34

The generator of destiny

is indifferent whether

it is itself a mind

or a system, past or future.

It creates a series

of mirrors, and assignations

with mirrors. It arranges

delusive meetings

and models of the essential

meeting. Whatever

Christ was, for example,

is disappointing: a user,

a taker. More recently,

the decay of democracy

demands one pay lip-service

everywhere, saying

There is no destiny, only

lives – which is silly.

The crank without destiny,

the poor who might have had destinies

had they been rich are no argument

against destiny. And a Friend

isn’t someone who asks me

to “follow him”; he’s unequivocally

on my side. I hear his defense of me, feel

his supportive fists approach

the murk of this place and its voices;

if he can defeat them, I’m real.

frederick Pollack

29

Over a Beer