United Disorder

What direction does your sentence move: you belonging to the land or the land belonging to you.

This is a question of the people and the state.

What can or cannot be bought and sold, given and taken.

A question and a statement.

In what was called the United Order, there was no selling of crops, no personal gain that wasn’t within reach of the greater good. That was the idea.

We look not at the things which are seen but the things which are not seen. Our affliction which is but for a moment is attached to a far more exceeding and eternal weight.

Feel this weight, even for a moment. Such is the eternal. The stopping of the clock.

When one points behind the shape of one body, there ever is another there.

Where is the line between yours and ours.

Depends on whom you ask. Depends on where you stand.

Notes:

“United Disorder” is from Liontaming in America (New Directions, 2024). © 2024 by Elizabeth Willis. Used by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

Source: Poetry (September 2024)