February 15th, 2017
Turning and turning the aspiring expire
The simulation does not understand the simulated;
Change is an art; the 1% cannot hold;
Oligarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-money ride is juiced, and everywhere
The ceremony of governance is drowned;
The best lack persistence, while the worst
Are full of bloviating insensitivity.
Surely more revelations are at hand;
Surely the Second Coming has been bungled.
The Second Coming! Hardly is the myth worn out
If a talking head out of Spiritus Mortem
Troubles our sight: a waste of fecund land;
A shape inside a poorly-tailored suit, head of an old man,
A gaze numb and slow-blinking as a toad,
Encouraging a diet of lies, while all about It
Echo caws of sly, greedy, carrion birds.
Another headline drops and now we know
That two and half centuries of imperfection
Were vexed to sheer folly by self-interest,
And what rough hands, invisible to the last,
Midwife over Washington’s laborious rebirth?
(after Yeats)