I open my internet browser each day
to the New York Times website;
daily--a collision.
Is this the post-modern present age?
How to reconcile
that deaths in Sudan
Iraq or North Korea are reduced to
a twelve-point number on the screen?
We are here; they are there.
But where is here?
Caught in the space between
what is and what ought to be.
a bitonality of two worldviews
touch ever so slightly.
Here is a sliver of space for hope—
the resultant overlap
of apparent brokenness and
incipient beauty.
The title “bitonality” was inspired by a talk by Jeremy Begbie at the International Arts Movement conference in New York City, February 2006. It refers to a passage of music, as in Stravinsky’s Petrushka, when both an F#m and C major chord are played simultaneously. The different chords resound not only together, but through each other, combining the old to create a jolting sound of newness.
