Rehearsals for Utopia
BY ALEX DIMITROV
The Mystery—begins one headline—
or why in looking for utopia on Earth
over 900 people were led to mass suicide in 1978.
Why some of us have never been in love and marry.
Why walking out on the past
may change as little as walking back in.
Some piece of land in the Alaska wilderness
no person has survived or seen.
As to tell—of the seconds, minutes,
stretches of time recorded between someone
being pronounced dead and returning.
What is referred to as Lazarus syndrome.
What many doctors and priests cannot explain.
Why people get up for morning
in the middle of night. At the height of pain
or atop the tallest mountain in this world
where it’s possible to see three countries at once
and for many impossible to live in just one
without looking for more. Why do we think
there is more? After everything. After anyone
on this page, in this room…has maybe twenty,
fifty, surely no more than eighty years left
of this—and this again—and this in snow
or rain—even less than—the end.
Its unforgiving heat. Where whatever
we meant to become is minor. Is gone.
Like the story of everyone
who found fame and soon understood
being known is almost enough.