IV: Something Rich

In spring the grass grows long and thin,
reaching for the sun and driven by the gathering rain.
But would you believe that in autumn it's the thickest?
In autumn it prepares for winter
by sending out its runners
underneath the soil.
Now is the time to feed your lawn,
regrow the bald spots and brown patches.

Go to the garage and bring out all the tools,
the spades and sacks and trowels and buckets.
A hollow-tined fork will pull plugs from the soil.
Poke in some unused earth, or peat and sand,
and top it off with something rich.

A kind of madness smoulders underneath
the skin. In favelas and river forests, in
the desperate scars of deserts, worked-out
old men and women and children who never
had a flicker of our luck were spent before
their minds could inch beyond survival and
then topped off with something rich.

Let's be fair. When our foreign President addresses
Congress he genuinely believes the things
he says about the young American soldier
generous in triumph before the grovelling Iraqi.
And behind the young American's back the Iraqi
can see the power naked that the young American
knows clothed, the pornography of men larger than
any citizen, two bullies in conclave with
their cronies spinning thrills with resources
that movie men must envy.

This is a kind of madness, but no vision,
a cosmic laughter that should have been hysteria.
Our leaders give the illusion of
release that tightens all control.
Their speeches are a rope that feels
like hands, their reach is sure, their
laws secure, their minds have the tautness of
dry skin: a neck is snapped, a future severed,
a past is dead, and powerful men relax.

O PRAISE

that sweet terrorist who brightened all our lives a while

The great men execute our will
and we conspire.

Against all people.