Ode to the Unbroken World, Which is Coming

By Thomas Lux

It must be coming, mustn't it?
Churches and saloons are filled with decent humans.
A mother wants to feed her daughter,
 fathers to buy their children things that break.
 People laugh, all over the world, people laugh. 
We were born to laugh, and we know how to be sad;
 we dislike injustice and cancer,
 and are not unaware of our terrible errors.
 A man wants to love his wife. His wife
wants him to carry something.
 We're capable of empathy, and intense moments of joy.
 Sure, some of us are venal, but not most.
There's always a punchbowl, somewhere, in which floats a…
 Life's a bullet, that fast, and the sweeter for it.
 It's the same everywhere:
Slovenia, India,
Pakistan, Suriname—people like to pray,
 or they don't,
 or they like to fill a blue plastic pool
 in the back yard with a hose and watch their children splash. 
Or sit in cafes, or at table with family.
 And if a long train of cattle cars passes along West Ridge
 it's only the cattle from East Ridge going to the abattoir.
 The unbroken world is coming,
 (it must be coming!), I heard a choir,
 there were clouds, there was dust,
 I heard it in the streets, I heard it announced by loudhailers
 mounted on trucks.