The Angel that presided o’er my birth
Said, “Little creature, form’d of Joy and Mirth,
“Go love without the help of any Thing on Earth.”
— Blake
1. AFTER THE WAR
Waves went on rolling across leagues of water.
Clouds hit high-pressure zones and piled up into new beauties.
A woman who lived alone cracked an egg on the rim of a pan.
A zygote, many zygotes, became
attached, precariously, to nourishing uterine walls.
A petulant dictator on the rise professed his admiration
for a spurious book deemed holy to those he planned to kill.
In regions newly designated countries
by people in countries elsewhere, resentments seethed.
A dozen academic papers sifted evidence
for calling a set of suspicious symptoms a new disease.
In the meantime and long before I knew myself at all,
my life had begun among ghosts who begged to be mourned
or demanded answers, especially the ones who didn’t know
they had been murdered — wrong name, faith, country.
I lay there, a little red fist, and wailed, but no one saw
that they surrounded me, asking for pity, or vengeance,
or begging forgiveness for crimes against me, maledictions
like unexploded ordnance in the neighborhood.
People once real, who’d loved their lives, and one another,
who might not have meant to harm but only warn me —
in what first tongue did I compose those poems
that calmed them, that bid them be silent so I could sleep?
I need that language now. They have returned. They circle me,
insistent, whispering: same war, same war, same war.
2. ART A GREAT INVESTMENT, SAYS FORBES
For sale at auction: wooden Santos
from Mexico
hand-painted in colorful uniforms,
rough-hewn, nearly identical
figurines,
swords drawn, holding
childrens’ bloody heads, arms, legs,
arranged
in the Sotheby’s brochure around
a screaming mother:
The Massacre of the Innocents, artist unknown.
A recurrent theme in western art:
Rubens, Breughel, Poisson, Ghirlandaio, others.
Amid the charred ribs of a schoolbus
in Yemen, a fragment of fusilage:
Commercial and Government Entity Code
C.A.G.E.
like a return address:
Lockheed Martin/General Dynamics
Burlington, Massachusetts/Falls Church, Virginia
“… engineering a better tomorrow.”
And in the bramble a ram entangled:
O angel of outrage, where are you?
for arms say
Aerospace
for surveillance
Information Systems
for bombers say
Defense
for taxes
say Earnings
say 2nd quarter
on track
say 62
billion US dollars
A voice was heard in Ramah.
Rachel weeping for her children.
A Saudi apologist claimed
the Yemeni school was teaching
insurrection.
King Herod’s fear. Precisely Herod’s fear.
In Breughel’s version, blood
on the village snow. In Ghirlandaio’s, blood
on the plaza’s stones,
imperial architecture in the background.
In Poussin’s a sandaled soldier, his foot
on a baby’s neck, dispassionately
sights down the blade. In the Rubens, it is hard
to separate the mothers from their babies;
the scene is one great mass of writhing flesh.
At the border, the official explained, it is hard
to separate the mothers from their babies.
Confia en mi, por favor, señora.
Déjame llevarla y traerle algo de comer.
“They are enclosures, the official said, “enclosures.”
They are temporary structures of chain
link.” “We’re uncomfortable with the term ‘cage’.
A voice was heard in Ramah.
Rachel weeping for her children.
To comfort them, to warm them, to console them,
they have each been given a blanket
made of foil.
At auction the Rubens sold
for 75 million dollars.
And in the bramble a ram entangled:
O angel of outrage, where are you?
Rubens, Breughel, Poisson, Ghirlandaio.
Raytheon, Lockheed Martin/General Dynamics,
Northrup Grumman, General Electric.
Herod, Franco, Trump, Mohammed bin Salman.
Historians have no evidence the massacre took place.
Flavius Josephus does not mention it.
The Orthodox Church has for millenia held
that Herod, as punishment, was eaten alive by worms.
TAGS: ART FORBES MONEY-LAUNDERING MASSACRE YEMEN LOCKHEED MARTIN RAYTHEON GENERAL DYNAMICS TRUMP BIN SALMAN HEROD MEXICO ARTEMIS ISAAC IPHIGENIA WAR COLD WAR AMERICA CHILDREN BOEING CAGE AUCTION
3. SENTINEL
now 3,
his birthphoto:
asleep,
fist
under his chin.
“No!” he says,
“Not me! Not!”
guarding
his own
becoming.
4. HOLD THAT POSE
In old-time billowing shirtsleeves,
baggy woolen pants,
and ankle-high black captoes,
grandfather-like
Edison, a picture of Edison,
as if he has just heard news
from the prophets obviating hope
of happiness,
of any, ever again…
but no, his frown, his anger, his clean-
shaven, cathode stare
is for his adversaries.
Who owns the light?
A button, a toggle, a dimmer:
control and guidance
systems: a satellite, its solar panels wings,
a painting, hyper-realist, above
earth’s marbled blue curve
figures a lovely emptiness, of grace,
(artist’s rendering in fine print bottom right)
better
much better than
a charred orb sulphured yellow
as a smoker’s fingers.
5. MUNDUS ET INFANS
of celibate churchmen do they come,
these cherubs, wrists and ankles creased,
they are so plump, and much too heavy
for their tiny wings? Ideas, not children,
that have never matured, impossible,
equating helplessness with innocence,
wordless amnesia with paradise, so I
call bullshit on Paul: When I was a child,
I spake as a child in pain, and asked
my questions clearly, in a sweeter voice
perhaps, but not less serious than now
when clarity remains at least as hard and
honesty much harder. I still play dead
to keep in practice since you never know.
6. TRIBUTE
he went down.
This time none,
not one man,
not one pill,
not one hope
could stop him.
Not one cry.
Not one hand
could reach him.
Not one lie
could save him.
He went down.
This man lived
where men fear
what they know
and owned what
he knew and
quaking, spoke.
Not one bond
could turn him,
not one friend
could soothe him.
He went down.
We mourn him.
for Patrick McSorley
Note: Patrick McSorley was among the earliest and most powerful voices to speak out against the widespread sexual assault of children by Catholic priests. He had been assaulted as a 12-year-old boy by Rev. John J. Geoghan, a notorious abuser with hundreds of victims. After a long struggle with addiction, likely a consequence of his boyhood sexual abuse, he died at age 29.
7. PROGRESS
Iphigenia
Isaac
kids
bugs
on the windshield ever since
story / explanation / lowdown / narrative / narration / citation / recital / report / take / version / rundown / score / apologue / allegory / metaphor / myth / parable / fable / discourse / propaganda / treatise / testament / epic / justification / rationale / excuse
**WE’RE SORRY, SOMETHING WENT WRONG.
PLEASE TRY YOUR QUERY AGAIN**
fish gotta swim
birds gotta fly
boats gotta sail
fish, birds, boats,
kids,
swim, fly, sail,
die
at the direction of frowning,
serious, disciplined men
who grew up with me, in America,
on their bikes, on rollerskates
under the horsechestnut trees,
trading baseball cards they bought
with money from their paper routes,
the nightmare true now, nightmare
of my Cold War boyhood
true
to children elsewhere.
And in the bramble a ram entangled
O angel of outrage, where are you?
Because everybody needs a job.
(We are one great mass of writhing flesh.)
Because fear begets profits and profits
beget more nifty gadgets,
first best gizmo off the line is always an idea,
an assumption,
a mysterious, immaterial twin
to every sleek weapon thereafter,
a prayer
to consecrate the idol. Years of this,
decades, generations,
(Hey, I’m just trying to make a buck!)
O shake us! Make our hearts
hammer shame-in-the-face.
Blood drips from the public
monuments like icicles in spring.
We no longer know how to know what we know.
**ERROR: 404: NOT FOUND**
8. IN THE MEAN TIME
we drank to our prosperity.
The boys are off to prison or to war.
The girls carve crosses in their thighs.
Sirens, blue lights, shots fired.
Even enough is not enough.
The server’s down. The safety’s off.
History’s a hoarder’s burning house.
9. ISAAC’S DREAM
It’s dark. I’m afraid. I can’t see.
No one. Only an old nightmare.
Now I’m falling into nowhere
while a body looms above me:
who is it? Who’s there?
Who’s pulling my hair
and muttering so angrily?
No one. Only an old nightmare.
A hand on my throat: air!
I garble a choked plea.
Who’s there? Who’s there?
I hear moaning somewhere;
a shout wakes me abruptly.
No one. Only an old nightmare.
Slowly, I see the dream
was fact, was memory,
and I know who was there:
my father, my old nightmare.
10. A DAINTY DISH
its pockets full of lies.
Four and twenty children
sent sailing off to die.
When the boat was sinking
the sharks began to sing.
Can we even let ourselves
imagine their suffering?
The keeper of the lighthouse
was counting out his money.
Politicians took to TV,
said the usual baloney.
The maid was in the garden
afraid of what she knows.
Along came justice, smirking,
and thumbing its nose.
11. ENFANT SOLDAT
Some boys cried, but I was a shaking one.
The day of the trucks I wanted to run
but I was shaking and shaking. If I run?
Two boys who did was in the middle of the circle.
Never can I ever not be thinking of this now.
On the ground, boots on their backs
they are scared on their faces. And the boy who is beside me
they give him the gun. He was little,
one of those crying kind. Shoot them boys on the ground dead.
Shoot him and him dead, they say, him and him.
The crying boy he could not do it.
Never can I ever not be thinking of this now.
So the man, he was who drove the truck,
take back the gun and shoot him in his face.
Then he is right away dead. Quiet.
All around the circle then the man is walking, looking
in our faces and I cannot stop shaking.
When he make another boy the one,
make him to hold the gun, that boy
step to the boys on the ground and shoot their heads.
We all climb in the trucks then.
And that is how they took us to Mushasi camp. For training.”
12. SEER
Artemis, to whom men pray
for permission to kill wild
creatures of her forests, spirits
Iphigenia away, to Tauris
where she makes prophecy
of the single thing she knows,
denied by all who seek her:
children will be sacrificed
for riches or for victory.
What she knows is always so.
It’s almost too easy. Almost.
Hardest are the armored men
who clatter up her stairs.
She knows the harm they will do
and that no words will stop them.
