Only after I finished this did I begin to feel that - not in a crude
allegorical way, but more darkly - it's an anniversary poem. For today, the
fourth 9/11.
Digest
The enemy has broken in,
is briefly repelled; rallies.
The King is in his counting-house;
has entered from an outer room
where there were both living and dead.
The living soldiers left
at the sound of renewed
assault, and without a word
from him. (Because they’ve no retreat,
he thinks. Because they are loyal
to me. Whatever that may mean
to them as opposed to me.)
Now he is surrounded
by gold instead of blood;
already much depleted, soon gone.
The Queen and princes at his orders fled
but the enemy owns the roads …
(My name, he ponders, is already dead.)
He goes into his chapel,
self-consciously prays
but gives it up as a bad job;
various confessors
long since joined the intriguers.
Concussions loosen fresco-dust and gilt.
If this were an uprising of the people
(he wonders)
I have undoubtedly oppressed,
would I feel better? Or am I happier
that someone like myself
will glory in these rooms and not the mob?
Intrigued by this uncertainty, he wanders
into his council chamber,
fingers the sumptuous table he used to pound.
Swords clang and soldiers yell three rooms behind.
There seems infinite time
for intuition, none for critique, he thinks
and at last enters
the throne room. Here too
are numerous costly sacred paraphernalia.
God is an aesthete,
he decides, not a moralist;
gazing down on exceptional scenes, He seeks merely
a fine brief light.
September 11, 2005
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