Dissenter

 for Zhang Zhan

 

Discord is as necessary as concord –

music history a pendulum’s swing

between harmony and dissonance;

in Hegel’s philosophy, no thesis to

synthesis without antithesis. Marcuse

said all transcendent art has to destroy

complacency, superficial consensus.

 

“At the risk of striking an off-note,” she

says before each grand assembly of those

who espouse certainty; to whom she is

agitator and whistleblower, a girl who

won’t stay mum – sitting alone on some

stone steps, making her small voice heard:

with her many names: Cassandra, Antigone,

Joan, Rosa, Malala, Greta…

From We are the Walrus (Salmon Poetry/Nov 2022)