What Do You Think Will Happen Now? - Owen Pallett

The difficulties of my story:

Despite discomforts, despite myself, I

I reaffirm my endless devotion

To the belief that we’re all of value

We’re all of virtue, and so inclined we

Fill up our cups and toast to each other

And though I listen to the arguments

That most divergent systems employ to

Debilitate us, delineate us

Repackage our words, demystify us

I unceasingly affirm my love can

Cannot be measured, cannot be altered

I know, I know it, I do affirm it

With overzealous obscurantism

With every word and with every gesture

I must express it.

I can’t define it

But all the same I know I can describe it:

I walk o’er bridges and see the river

A marble statue the sun has weather’d

The stubbornness of the overgrowth and

The old memorials covered in snow.

We’ve

Written the way the universe will go

A righteous white horse, a man with a bow

A sharpened bit of the mistletoe

Scissors of fate or the fire of Surtur

Though we’re divided, the force of nature

Will put us all in the ground together

(This morning I must get up

To see the world around me

Right away, what I forgot

In seeing ourselves as words upon a paper.)

The sun is up

My arms are wide

I am a good man, I am yours