History & Politics

Chile, 1834

1

I

The veldt men pray
Carved wood and stone
And tear their flesh
To vein and bone.

The idols scowl
In the brassy sun
Unmindful of
Appeasement done.

Yea, warriors cringe,
Whose tauntings dare
The regnant brute
In regal lair.

As tribal gods
The brave confound,
They bruise their heads
Against the ground.

Kennings of death
Encyst the square,
The mourners drool
And children scare.

Down in the shipyard, day and night,
The Galahads of the dock,
Hard as the sinews of basin rock,
Build an ocean cosmopolite.

The rivets stab and the hammers bite
Into the beams and plates of steel
Of the Diesel heart and the belly keel.

We,
The workers of the world strike catholic notes
On woods and irons, wring from brassy throats
Epics of industry.

Now the summer air exerts its syrupy drag on the half-dark
City under the strict surveillance of quotation marks.

The citizens with their cockades and free will drift off
From the magnet of work to the terrible magnet of love.

In the far suburbs crenellated of Cartesian yards and gin
The tribe of mothers calls the tribe of children in

Across the bluing evening. It’ s the hour things get
To be excellently pointless, like describing the alphabet.

Music: Sexual misery is wearing you out.
Music: Known as the Philosopher’ s Stair for the world-weariness which climbing it inspires. One gets nowhere with it.
Paris: St-Sulpice in shrouds.
Paris: You’ re falling into disrepair, Eiffel Tower this means you! Swathed in gold paint, Enguerrand Quarton whispering come with me under the shadow of this gold leaf.
Music: The unless of a certain series.
Mathematics: Everyone rolling dice and flinging Fibonacci, going to the opera, counting everything.
Fire: The number between four and five.

This is your foreign correspondent,
Aristotle, for The Poetics,
reporting live from the Mediterranean
where the skulls and bones of a few Egyptians
crown the tradeships of His Majesty,
wave back and forth:
starfish — moons — Februaries.

To my right, our military advisor,
Hernando Cortez,
oversees operations at the Aztec/
Mexican border
where to the left of a stone no longer rising from water
a dove collects
its nest egg
upon the skeleton of a hummingbird.

In the dark irritation of the eyes there is a snake hiding

In the exhalations of Americans there is a crumbling empire

In the foul waters of the rivers there are Palestinians

OUT OUT of its borders pain has a leash on its neck

In the wheat stalks there are insects vaccinated against bread

In the Arabian boats there are sharks shaken with laughter

In the camel’ s belly there are blind highways

OUT OUT of TIME there is spring’ s shattered hope

In the deluge on our plains there are no rains but stones

We were dreaming on an occupied island at the farthest edge
of a trembling nation when it went down.

Two towers rose up from the east island of commerce and touched
the sky. Men walked on the moon. Oil was sucked dry
by two brothers. Then it went down. Swallowed
by a fire dragon, by oil and fear.
Eaten whole.

It was coming.

We had been watching since the eve of the missionaries in their
long and solemn clothes, to see what would happen.

They say I am excitable! How could
I not scream? The Swiss monk’ s tonsure
spun till it blurred yet his eyes were still.
I snapped my gaiter, hard, to stuff back

my mirth. Lords, he then began to speak.
Indus catarum, he said, presenting the game of cards
in which the state of the world is excellent described
and figured. He decked his mouth

as they do, a solemn stitch, and left cards
in my hands. I cast them down.
What need have I for amusement?
My brain’ s a park. Yet your company