Comes the Dawn

by James Como (February 2021)

Night City, Tavern, Marianne von Werefkin

We are striving
for the fruits of diving
into a treasured passion.
And though religion is out of fashion,
its credal clarity and zeal for teaching
actualizes our preaching
of all truth allowable:
none disavowable.

But, the Mass
Economicus uninterested in class,
we adapted and saw
to shuck their will to straw:

            though catechetically fallow,
            more superficial than shallow,
            our jive is beckoning,
            there would be a reckoning . . .

And there was, almost. Unbidden,
in plain sight we lay hidden.
            No longer canonic,
            yet chill and ironic,
            our epoch only seeming past—
            a pose that would not last—

Now look! The People see our thought bespoke,
And they, and you, and all shall soon be woke!

Table of Contents

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James Como is the author of The Tongue is Also a Fire: Essays on Conversation, Rhetoric and the Transmission of Culture . . . and on C. S. Lewis (New English Review Press, 2015). His most recent books are C. S. Lewis: a Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2019) and The Folk Tales of Brusco and Giovanni, in three books (KDP, 2020)

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