Upon Hearing of the State of the Nation
“Yet Edmund was beloved.”
King Lear, V.iii.274
And yet he was beloved. Mark how the hours
Turn invisibly: see the ripple that they leave,
The wake they mock with sleep. Another poem
On death? The voice, the audience, that spits
And hurls its paper bags is tired of death
And poetry. It wants illusion,
Not heightened misery. Cordelia in
The arms of an old man: that’s High School
Stuff in this College ward. There are no old
Men here: everyone’s twenty-nine, and made
Of muscle. Muscle and mirrors, Ipods and health –
From climbing mountains of debt, not death.
Where are the old men? Cordelia,
Where will you go to die, now that dying
Is done, and your murderers remark in
Their muscled mirrors about being loved?
