WINTER SOLSTICE
The dark advances. The light retreats.
We've seen this movie before.
We don't need an oracle at Delphi.
Inferior people are at the center of power.
Superior people are at the periphery.
Misfortune.
The I Ching is - what? - more than three thousand years old?
Vulgar people with vulgar displays walk on gilded splinters.
Everybody knows to carry personal identification papers
for the police state. Not that they do any good
if they want you deported or locked up or disappeared.
We've seen this movie before. It's Chinatown, Jake.
Warrants? We don't need no stinking warrants.
Due process is what we say it is.
The police are here to preserve disorder.
Pinkerton provocateurs, masked federal agents,
Klansmen, goon squads, Triad turf wars, mob thugs,
Cossacks, Janjaweed.
We've seen this movie before. No need to see it again.
Inferior people at the center of power,
superior people at the periphery.
A deep freeze settles in, a season of darkness.
Stagnation. Work on what's been ruined.
Tend your own garden. Cry in the wilderness.
After the solstice, after the flood,
the light advances, the dark retreats.
Everybody knows we've seen this movie before.
The Midcoast Villager
Poem of the Week
December 18, 2025
Bruce Williams is a filmmaker living in Belfast (Maine). He admires
and tries to emulate the poetry of the late James Tate, who taught
at UMass Amherst, but he lacks Tate's subtlety and humor.