Who could imagine their ancestors
all stark raving mad,
or at least each generation
marking out as bad
an apple flung far from the tree,
opposed to status quo
and causing much embarrassment,
endless grief and woe?
Yet isn’t it a kind of madness
to mime, deaf and mute,
precisely as your forebears did,
and not press your own suit?
And times when the world was mad —
if your lot stayed the same,
would you not think it odd or find
some malady to blame?
To think that no one in my family
thought this world not right,
or questioned why it should be so,
gives me an awful fright.
For what is more insanity:
to flee a maddened world,
or find a place inside the whirlwind
and stay safely curled?
A paradox that troubles me
whenever I feel sane
is why I find a normalcy
amidst such strife and pain,
and why we fear insanity,
which makes us more aware
of that which keeps the world divided:
in here, and out there.
23 JAN 2005
One could argue, I suppose, that there is a hint of madness to be found in EVERY family tree. And for those that exhibit no overt sign of it, I suggest that itself is the madness.
