Artificial Populations at "Ground Zero"

The centre that he sought was a state of mind,
Nothing more, like weather after it has cleared--
Well, more than that, like weather when it has cleared
And the two poles continue to maintain it

And the Orient and the Occident embrace
To form that weather's appropriate people,
The rosy men and the women of the rose,
Astute in being what they are made to be.

This artificial population is like
A healing-point in the sickness of the mind:
Like angels resting on a rustic steeple
Or a confect of leafy faces in a tree--

A health--and the faces in a summer night.
So, too, of the races of appropriate people
Of the wind, of the wind as it deepens, and late sleep,
And music that lasts long and lives the more.

In this late poem by Wallace Stevens, the Mazeppist finds his or her true calling: to be born at last from the embrace of Orient and Occident. To rise up the rosy men and women of the rose astute in being what they are made to be: a healing-point in the sickness of the mind that has divided east from west (and, as Stevens would have it, divided imagination from reality). For such is the nature of the everyday psycho-pathology that afflicts every citizen of the emergent American Empire, growing more rotten every moment with the insidious ideology of American Exceptionalism.

Not Exceptionalism, but Appropriateness, says Stevens. To be the appropriate people of the weather that prevails when east and west, imagination and reality, are brought into balance and harmony. When dialogue, conversation, and deliberation banish violence from the repertoire of human relations.

Here is the Mazeppist's Wallace Stevens dream:

Real American genius finally wakes up and recognizes how the American nation was driven mad by grief and horror and fear stoked to a frenzy by the cynical and criminal opportunism of the ruling class in the aftermath of 9/11; recognizes how the American nation lashed out at innocents at home and abroad, engaging in wars of choice, suppression of freedom (in the name of freedom), rape, looting, torture...All the misguided expressions of an organism in pain.

And then, miraculously, real American genius, awakened from its decade-long nightmare, remembers itself. It remembers itself and resolves to create a sacred space at "Ground Zero" that would NOT be a monument to jingoism and bigotry, flag-waving paranoia and hate. Real American genius--Oh, if such a thing had survived the 20th century!--would create a space at "Ground Zero" that would be inviting to people of all faiths and no faith to gather and to contemplate what happened there and how the American nation completely lost its bearings as a consequence.

And in a moment of heretofore unfathomable generosity of spirit, real American genius would declare that, "Today, we will build a new 'mosque,' a new space for prayer, remembrance, and contemplation, here, at 'Ground Zero.' We will call a cease-fire around the world and withdraw our troops. We will re-appropriate the billions of dollars we are spending on revenging our hurt on people who never hurt us and re-direct those billions of dollars to the betterment of the American people and of all peoples everywhere."

And then the American nation would go to work on this new task, this new creation, this new Jerusalem, and all the world would look on in awe.