Waking up Before the Thirty Years War

and in a simpler time, A.D. 1505.
No sirens
like tomcats gutted to the voice
of a screaming violin.
No engine backfire, no electric
guitar. A peasant girl sings
to herself below my window.
A woodcarver hawks his flutes
and pan-pipes, as another cartload
of lumber rumbles into town.
Black Forest oaks
with their deep ringed secrets.
Gazing east, I see the patch-
work greens of field and pasture,
a pastoral plume of smoke
from slash-fire as the dark
primeval woods give up
another acre. Prime evil
is a modern homonym. What wit
or wisdom, what disillusion or
delusion, progress, five hundred
years of hindsight
bid me yell down
from my open window, Stop!