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A Night in a
Vanquished Country
I am a guard of the Cross
still and a man of my country, even as I see from the hill, by fires,
the sawn descent, the resting desolation.
Whoever else has fled or has taken off his helmet and his rose to stand in his house or bury or steal is
beneath my keep or kingdom, my valor and my compassion. Let them spend
out their character, expecting
their murder. For, suddenly, one is no longer a virtuoso or dissolute,
one has no concept of a delicacy or likes
clouds; there are no shared labors, no
paideia, no strangers. Tomorrow
you will look into a vault of sunlight and
ask, Who needed these
machicolations? What beasts are on the shards of
pottery? The timetable for a train
that is apocryphal is the only working clock, the world stops at the
last newspaper. You can have or not have
a night in a vanquished country and either can be most usual. And though
whatever you have stolen is past
your example and there is no family or friend to beg for you or bribe,
seeing as how there are foreigners in
the palace, I will keep you as a thief on the Cross beyond your life,
and cover your face with straw, mourning as
you do all night, remembering how my beloved once splashed me at a
trough. I will prevent the glory of your
custom.
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©
Habley Mouse, a Private Press,
2006. All rights reserved. (Poetry by William Frank)
(Also available from
Amazon.com)
Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of
this publication may be reproduced,
distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a
database or retrieval system, without
the prior written permission of the author.
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