History & Politics

All day she stands before her loom;
The flying shuttles come and go:
By grassy fields, and trees in bloom,
She sees the winding river flow:
And fancy’ s shuttle flieth wide,
And faster than the waters glide.

“All quiet along the Potomac,” they say,
“Except, now and then, a stray picket
Is shot as he walks on his beat to and fro,
By a rifleman hid in the thicket.
’ Tis nothing — a private or two, now and then,
Will not count in the news of the battle;
Not an officer lost — only one of the men
Moaning out, all alone, his death-rattle.”

Kwangju, 1980

Sarajevo, 1992

Before I was born, I saw a tissue of ingenious detours, an inextricable tangle
wreathed with mistake.

Perhaps the ghost does not limp away, but rather forests flee me, frightened.
Look, they are setting a place for loss, clearing the table for the first glow of
antiquity.

Here we see William T. Walters in his little library illuminated, carefully
smoothing the lip of the continent.

What form bounds forward from behind but The Atlantic Railroad Coastline Co.?
The whole Roman Empire was sold by ascending auction in 193 A. D.

Perhaps the universe is an extinguished building
with blue banners strung along
and the forest, more like a commodity
bordering bushes and asphalt,

something else to string our blue banners on.
Never was restoration swifter:
the leafless trees, the asphalt
less splintered and more splendid.

Never was restoration swifter
with its mightier solutions,
less splintered and more splendid
snipers, dynamiters, colorful bombs.

The world weeps. There are no tears
To be found. It is deemed a miracle.
The president appears on screens
In villages and towns, in cities in jungles
And jungles still affectionately called cities.
He appears on screens and reads a story.
Whose story is he reading and why?
What lessons are to be learned from this story
About a time that has not arrived, will not arrive, is here?
Time of fire and images of fire climbing toward the sun
Time of precious and semi-precious liquids
Time of a man and a woman doused in ink

It had to be from someone whose grandparents were born in Shanghai
not the city’ s greatest citizens, but certainly among the sober ones
to make their small now eroded mark
It had to be from a distant or dissolute descendant (yes, moi)
who can sing praises unworthy of even a flicker of your attention

We wonder at our shifting capacities, keep
adding and striking skills
from the bottoms of our résumés
under constant revision
like the inscriptions on tombs
shared for generations
unnervingly up
to date

Made nervous by our shift in capabilities, we write:

greetings
as the door opened
ticking

please listen to this
food alone for all
the f. b. i. will continue

maybe you dozed off
i hung by that phone all night
suppose he talks

*

vida

later

aria

*

once upon a time
not looking for any thing

*

you’ re on
your own
it’ s off
it’ s on

*

perhaps it means
ragged like that
golda my-yeer
pre-meer

*

and pour the old box
down a drain

*