Thou Helen Hill Will Have Her Revenge On New Orleans
It's coming for us through the trees.
This is a message from the River.
This is a sermon from Nature.
To see us weep and moan, to see us float or drown.
This is a blighted land, infected with the virus of human
greed,
corruption chokes every breath as we exalt the culture of
excess.
Inhaled to the depths of our oaken roots.
Exhaled as billowing refinery pollution.
Indifference subsists in our bones.
This is our unspoken history, a bestial temperament
obscured by social constraints.
And that brief moment when Nature's wrath released us
from Modernity's restraints has offered us a glimpse of
what boils beneath our skin.
But do not confuse causality and cataclysm.
This is systemic violence, and we are all guilty.
Some day a real rain will come and wash all the scum off
the streets.
She'll come back as fire and burn all the liars, leave a
blanket of ash on the ground.
