ELSA. REQUIEM. For a world I believed I lived in.

I was sitting quietly this morning. The word, requiem, came into my mind. Requiem - a heavy word. A formal ritual for someone who has recently died. A public acknowledgement of a death.

I was not feeling grief. I felt an inner quiet. A quiet recognition of the loss, the death of the worldI I had inhabited - or rather, the death of the world I had believed I inhabited. 

I found pen and paper, and began to write a requiem for that simpler world that did not exist. 

I’ve heard many people say, I want to go back to . . . And also, We’ll never get back to . . .

I say: I was never living in the world I believed in.

And so, REQUIEM - for my belief that the world was as it appeared to me to be. Wrongs, wars, famines, injustices. But no force intent on enslaving us all, destroying this planet.

REQUIEM

Requiem
     for the world I knew
Requiem
     It no longer exists
Requiem

I remember and grieve it
     this world I believed in

This world where the world was safe
     Yes, wars and famines
But the world was safe
     Yes, massive injustices, mass killings
But the world was safe

Or so I believed it to be

Now, requiem
     for a lost world
          gone forever
     the lost world of my belief

The seemingly solid firmament
     has been torn
          broken

A cabal a cohort
     against us
     against the world
          that I believed in

My planet is in danger

Requiem

I am alone
     as if at a graveyard
     as if at the edge of a grave

I am at a private requiem
     for a lost world
     where the evil
              was out of sight 
       where the evil forces
               made their evil moves
                    but I did not know

It felt so solid
     that world I mourn
     that world with a thick veil
          between what I saw
          and the forces
               making their moves
               playing their game

Requiem

For a moment I am in a cathedral
high vaulted dome above me
the coffin in front

I am quiet

In the stillness I wait
     to know my next move

Maybe it is time
     to take time
          to honor
               the deep inner loss 

Elsa
Mar 11, 2024