Temüjin Becomes Genghis
Yesterday he was made Khan.
A wind across the steppe attacks his words.
It doesn’t matter. What matters is
he is seen – on a stallion, on a hill,
invoking ancestors
and raising the horsetail standard –
by sixty thousand warriors.
They are Naimans, Merkits, Tatars, Uighurs, Keraits, all
now Mongols. Have been made one,
and his, by marriage, oath, defeat,
betrayal and its punishment – the noble death
that spills no blood. They spend weeks
in the saddle. They can fire an arrow a second.
They pierce their horses’ necks to drink.
They are always filthy.
When Temüjin now Genghis waves
his standard towards the west –
his motives include border security, fate,
contempt for life, and monopoly of the Silk Road –
they will raze Samarkand and Baghdad
to bones and dust, enslave Bulgars, Russians, Poles
and Chinese. But now comes a pause:
the Khan is having a vision.
He sees a palatial covered bazaar,
unnaturally white. It is lit by hanging moons
and flashing colored serpents.
Its stalls, full of delicate clothes
and mysterious objects, are fronted
by acres of a thing he barely knows:
glass. His attention is drawn
to a kind of cart, lifted by magic
from floor to floor. A family of gods
steps from it, walking slowly among
the strange-featured crowd. The gods
are almost perfectly spherical.
Their faces bear the sleepy lack
of expression and the smile of bodhisattvas.
Absently they inspect the shops.
The Khan shares his tribe’s attitude
towards religion – it’s a private matter. But if
the easeful gods in the souk of Heaven wish
to bless his armies, he can only praise.
The meanest groom in the distance hears
his joyful shout, and sees
his standard lay its claim. Forward, my minions.
The Taker
To see him, you have to step out
of character. Which means that character
wasn’t fate, it was choice, like they said; that you
chose everything bad
in yours; and that now, with no backup,
you’re done. But it’s the only way to see him.
You do what you wouldn’t have, earlier: you go
to his office and fawn
at the feet of the girl at the desk. Who calls
the guards, whom you suck, but they throw
you out anyway. So you
phone all day from outside.
But you can’t wear him down – rather,
he chooses to call and tell you to return.
His lobby and hallways are cleared; some prying
auxiliary faces hold their noses.
You’re stunned by the things and light and size
of the corner office he chose.
Then as far past the edge
of character as possible, you ask not
what you did wrong, but what the essence
of your wrongness was. And he tells you.
Apodictically, simply, in a tone
you may hear as impersonal or brutal.
Now, if there’s nothing more …
But there is: to go home, through jeering streets
and the indifferent day,
and sit and hug your wall (insofar
as one *owns a wall), content
to have used up the world.
Lame Duck
The noise from upstairs, which may be an effect
of plaque in the arteries or brain, makes it hard
to blog. The Fall into Time
is not unaffected by time and locale.
In Europe, the dead are more talkative, great
fictional slobs like the Underground Man cheer
one on, one can have a tradition, a style
and welfare, but here
there’s only noise from upstairs and the drip
of hours. It’s like solitary confinement,
wherever one goes and however many
former colleagues one meets
in the emergency room or bars. I’ve been
considering the phrase “creative destruction”
and think what it mostly applies to
is *food. As Happy Meals vanish, they create
shit and an aimless circular motion
upstairs. One of my neighbors
still has a wife to blame. Another
plays Heavy Metal, anthem of *posthistoire.
He blames himself. But if there were
a phase shift or he had a winning
number, he’d become –
not literate, which does nothing –
but his own wealthy double, perhaps
a congressman, and still
be able to blame himself. Which is why
he votes for the rich, and congressmen …
Jack Kennedy, it has been fifty years – *fifty –
Can I ask now what my country can do for me?
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