Comparing then and Now

It wasn't that long ago that things were, sorta, normal

As I look at today and the days before, the Invasion of the Body Snatchers in LA, and now elsewhere, the handcuffing of Padilla, Israel attacking Iran, the Big Billionaire Bill chugging on through, I think “there was a time when what we cared about was the price of eggs.”

I had occasion in a Substack comment today to muse on Kristi’s name:

Never contradict a Noem or Gnome
One gets you shot, or if a shotgun isn't handy, handcuffed
The other gets you curses and your milk will turn sour.

We really need to replace Noem with a Gnome.

Actually the milk sourers were brownies, and THAT got me remembering something I wrote in the 90s, that seems SO MUCH more relevant today than it did then. I hope you understand. Here is the inspiration, in case you have forgotten it:

THE BROWNIE REPORTS FROM GUENICA
 
There is a change in the world, a change in the way the world knows
mischief.  Once we lived quiet
behind byres, lived to thresh or spoil the farmer's grain
as the mood moved us, lived to calm his cattle, weave in the night
his sheep's soft wool.  We took as gift his bread
and cheese, his Christmas porridge studded with lumps of butter
and if he broke our pact, our kinship:
soured his milk, tweaked his cat,
called to his pig to sicken,
cow run dry.
 
	The elder dwarves in rock-cleft forged cuirass and great
	shield, warship to fold in god's pocket,
	broadsword with intricate hilt woven of silversong
	battle: on the scabbard heroes fought heroes,
	gold on golden, dancing.
 
Now I live alone in the corner of a world gone grey
and angular, live hunched in the lower left, behind
the shattered warrior's loosened
fist.  A woman shrieks through flame, a woman
howls to the implacable bull, her child dead and in pieces
slips through her swollen fingers; the spear-pierced horse
tramples a broken sword: and, observing all, the puzzled, reborn 
banshee, 
       leaning, learning.