Tropical winter. Reluctant to leave the insulation of blankets, but I go out. I place my feet in a shape of warmth as the rising sun enters, by elongated geometry, from the east. And here, the polyphony of the farm. Roosters with their long-distance proclamations, the consolation of doves, smaller birds organizing casually in trees. Morning greetings and sleepy conversation that gives way to the thumping or sweeping noises of human people at work. A door closes. The hollow jumble of bamboo chimes, and coconut palms shuffle like cards in the breeze. Someplace far away, a two-toned repetition, as something swings on a rusty hinge.
There are things that nobody wants to say outloud. That nobody enjoys. Sometimes you keep those things to yourself, but sometimes the truth starts flying around and then up your throat, like flies that are buzzing inside your mouth and you try to keep your lips shut but the interior sensation gets very intense, then they burst out in a curdled black vomit. Uncontained. Truth sometimes is the wrong thing at the wrong time. Ugly, ashamed, unwanted.
I think of how remarkable it was, the celebration of tragedy. To gather around the stage, as at a communal flame, together in the perfected ugliness of truth. To honor with a feast the maker-revealer of the most exquisitely necessary (you/me/us) problem. (I imagine tragedians as necessarily insufferable, though that could be wrong.) To revere the Muse. As protectors of the city, as if poetry itself could be the shield to defend against everything it artfully spits out. That would be the craft, if one could discern. What power you need from her, what power she has, and the light of day between those two things.