Watching Obama by Edna O’Brien 2004 You glided on A swank With a lava of language, Prince Hamlet himself in Illinois. Met your ghosts—raised them. In belted sackcloth Chill smiles A screed if ancient wrongs. Met the living too Who feared your witchcraft And bought daggers And several sets of masks. How far you were meant to travel Cutting through swathes of sky Losing or gaining an hour Puzzling the sad and savage things. Rivers far below The taupe earth Signatures of heaped snow. You emerged each time Debonair As though from a game of tennis. The sad, the savage things. The Ones who waited on the roadsides Believing you would come, Waited And were plenished. They were the ones who brought you hence As you had brought them In a beautiful, baffling synthesis. Now you are Home Brief is the banquet A Godsent slumber. Do you dream of heroic boyish deeds In some vacant lot, long ago And do you now begin to fold them Inside that gaudy Gauguin shirt And bury them Under bales of blissful snow. Your tailor has arrived To measure you for a breastplate And a yeoman’s greatcoat. Beyond the tumult And the fanfare, Beyond the anointing, The Quiet room That some call a cell Where poets weave epiphanies To the ranunculus That resembles the rose: And to the tree of atrocities. There monks kneel on stone And pray for nothingness. The Chalice Staring straight at you Like the sphinx stone-eyed Saying nothing, Not even a nod And weighs a ton.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Oct 2013 09:16:57 +0000