Hollow Men & the Great Unraveling

A poem for the homeless on Pandora Avenue

On one of the most beautiful, treelined boulevards in Victoria is where you will find a huge camp of homeless people, living in tents, with pets, drugs and what not. They’re camping out there because there is nowhere else for them to be, the local parks having been closed to ‘camping’ recently. And rents being sky high and only the very well off able to afford anything resembling a home. The Market has done its job.

Right next to the camp that is growing daily is an aid organization to which I sometimes donate. According to my son, the psychologist, our society has decided that these are people we can ignore. We have abandoned them. ‘Saving’ them, he says, could be done but at great cost. And there has to be political will too. Both are in short supply in the rich West. But I believe we are all in need of ‘saving’. Something has gone awry, and we all know it and feel it, every day. We’re a civilization in pieces. The camps are a potent reminder and a symbol that we are not doing enough. We’re dithering and debating, when we should be acting. The camps show our utter failure to come to grips with the malaise infecting us all.

How odd yet strangely appropriate it is that the street where they live is named Pandora. Though they suffer from all the ills that Pandora’s box contained, they retain a remnant of Hope. They are still alive and being alive is a state of hope, however weak, however easy to snuff out. Though we have allowed this human misery to fester for the last quarter century, it is now threatening to interfere with normal life. I certainly wouldn’t tempt fate by walking down Pandora, no matter what the video claims. Mental illness is real, so is drug addiction and they make people irrational. But I can’t ignore them either. When I drive past the encampment, I feel ashamed and angry. It seems to me that we have arrived at a moment of reckoning that cannot be postponed yet again. Our politicians know this and are making soothing noises, but not acting, as usual. The Zillionaires are not doing anything either; they are enjoying life on their yachts, their private planes, their mansions with sixteen bathrooms…

But remember: there but for the grace of (insert your preferred deity here) go I.

This is the last painting I did last year, and I had in mind the angst and panic the pandemic unleashed. It works just as well to illustrate the dissolute state of our society and the homeless who are its most visible sign.

Hollow Minds

When Eliot wrote The Hollow Men

Was he imagining

Political pundits pouncing

And using it to pan

The Great and the Good

In America

Of course not

but it comes in handy in discussions

About that not quite Black man

Obama, brilliant puppeteer

forever President and one of the most prominent of

                        hollow men

in love with the Unelect, the Zillionaires

hiding behind their wealth

avoiding the Topic of the Day

The Great Unravelling

of our world

our once great cities

our minds hollow with despair &

Waste on a scale

From which we avert our eyes

While a bitter taste

Remains

How long can this go on

How long before we take stock

And use the shock

To do something real

This is an old festering wound

There’s nothing left to steal

But I wonder

what do they hallucinate in their tents on Pandora

what do they worry about on their yachts in the harbour

what do we think about at home

hollow be their name

Truly whatever you do for one of these, you do for me

So said Jesus 2000 years ago

Remember

There but for the grace of God go we

There but for the grace

There but for

There but

There