505 History and politics poems

Insanity is not a want of reason. It is reason's overgrowth, a calculating kudzu. Explaining why, in two-ton manifesti, thinkers sally forth with testaments and pipe bombs. Heaven help us: spare us all your meaningful designs. Shine down or shower forth, but (for the earthling's sake) ignore all prayers followed by against, or for. Teach us to bear life's senselessness, our insignificance, and more; let's call that sanity. The terrifying prospect isn't some escapist with a novel, fond of comfort, munching sweets— it is the busy hermeneut, so serious he's sour, intent on making meaning of us all, and bursting from the towers to the streets.

(February, 1841) Melinda, I've been preparing to write. That peculiar girl named Molly, who has a bit of liberty in the house, has said she'll find some paper. I have practiced mixing charred wood with water and have managed to shave a twig so one end nearly resembles a nib, but tonight Lila got caught up under the good Doctor's whip for such a little offense. I am frightened. Doctor Jackson brought in a new troop of slaves today. A boy of thirteen among them had the welted cheek that speaks of a driver's dissatisfaction. Lila put a poultice on to ease the swelling, but Jackson wants the boy to understand his place and thinks a scar will help. Lila's back and neck and arms have thirty new wounds to replace the one she thought to heal. Melinda, how is Jacob? Ever yours, (February, 1841) Do you ever start at night believing I might be dead? I leave my body sometimes, Melinda. Is that all dying is? Remember how I'd scold you when the stew was thin, believing I needed a thick stock to forge muscle for all the work I had ahead? Your stew would make me big again, Melinda. Sometimes we have to trap, skin and roast possum, rabbit, snake and squirrel. Except for that, I have swallowed naught but salt pork and coarse meal in all my days away from you. But I work just fine. Ever your beloved husband, (March, 1841) What a herd of slaves Jackson brought in last month. No sooner had their strength returned after the long march to the farm from Lynchburg but they began to plot another run. We didn't know they'd planned to leave until they were already gone a day. All manner of neighborhood men came around to tip Jackson's whiskey and help him on the hunt, though all they brought back for their trouble were two bodies. One dead, one fighting off living. That boy I told you about, Ben with the slashed cheek? At the stony fork of the river Doc Jackson found his body, cut up, twisted as if it had fought long under water, a dead hand pointing in the direction his netted sister and the "damned lost lot of niggers" had run. I guess he was too obstinate even for the water to hold down easily. Jackson used Ben like a scarecrow, his shirt hooked on a pole, his body meant to warn us from the road. Lila's still not certain that the girl will live. Until tomorrow, I am ever your Joe. (December, 1843) William is the name Smythe matched to my description when he shipped me from his Wilmington slave pen to the Richmond consigner Jackson bought me from. So I am William, though it took more than one whipping for me to remember it. There is a woman keeps the kitchen here prefers we call her Auntie. She's been called so many names she "most forgets" which one means her. I trust Jacob is getting on in school just fine. I was, at his age, learning to carry myself with the pride of a Freeman. It's been many years since I've been able to answer to any person calling me that name. And Jacob? Can he remember his father? Please hug him for me, Melinda. I am ever your husband, (November, 1845) How many live on our alley in Philadelphia? There, this room might accommodate a bed and two chairs, but here we are three men, two women, some potions, and a girl. We sleep in turns. Marlo often walks the woods at night, his eye out on the traps for all of us.   'Dolphus steals sleep in the smithing shop and steals everything else before dawn. Just last week, we bore the tread of a muzzled goat and two hens he brought in from a neighbor's farm. Our field sweat adds stench to the store of bones, feathers, brews, and herbs Lila claims can cure the women on this place. Sadie, who Lila never tried to stop herself from bearing, sleeps with her body wedged behind the door. Molly swings it in her side each night when she turns up to sleep after Miss Amy's laudanum takes and again when she races the conch call to the house in the morning. Even Lena, who had a well-built cabin of her own when she lived on the place, pushed four babies off her tit to make room for the Doctor and for Miss Amy's boy. I wonder, Melinda, are your wages enough, since I went away, to satisfy the rent? Yours in tribulation, (December, 1847) The Doctor's had his eye on Molly since he caught her listening while the tutor drilled his son on Greek. She says the boy translates slowly. On a war now, his spoiled tongue has spent two days flogging some warrior's impenetrable shield. Molly showed me yesterday what a heart looks like. Traced it in the dirt that is my bed, my stool, my desk, my cabin floor. I miss you, Melinda. I miss feeling the little skip your heart took sometimes, though I know the pinch that came along with the stutter pained you.   Molly is a smart girl, though brutal in her zeal. She's quicker than a butcher to find cause to wield a knife. I am certain the Doctor will lapse in his vigilance soon enough. Then I will chance to capture on the page one of these letters. May God be good and grant so large a prayer. Yours, (January, 1848) We are like to lose another hand unless 'Dolphus can recover from the flogging he took over a missing pair of cufflinks. The girl who was brought home with Ben's body was quickly well enough to work, and she had less skin on her bones than Doctor Jackson left on 'Dolphus. Perhaps there is some little hope for Lila's husband. Molly is afraid to sneak me any of the Doctor's paper. Molly, who can be as bad as 'Dolphus about purloining pretty, useful things. I doubted she was earnest in her fear, but now I see what she, born here, must have always known. A man whose livelihood depends on stealing the toil of other people's bodies must keep a keen eye on his own most dear and precious things.

Mr. President! The monsoon season is approaching. This raises the question: What steps are planned to ensure the timely gathering of the harvest and to prevent farms from being inundated along the floodplains of the Amazon river? Mr. President! I just wanted to express how grateful I am. Never have I been so proud of my country. Under your presidency everything’s finally been made right. Allow me just to say a simple, heartfelt thank you. Mr. President! I have received my veteran’s pension. I am returning it to you, and thank you for your concern. Where were you, where was your human feeling, when my fingernails were being torn out? Mr. President! How long will our schools keep taking bribes for passing gym class? Mr. President! I’ve received a message that I must deliver to you. I’ve been ordered to do it. “Government of  Earth! We, the representatives of the Delta Orion star system, inform you that if you do not renounce atomic weaponry and psychic intervention, we will annihilate you.” Mr. President! I wish to express my concern. It seems to me that there isn’t enough freedom of speech in our country. I await your response. Mr. President! We are two belle ragazze and we want to have your children! And if that isn’t possible, we want our future men to be just like you and no one else! Ciao! xoxoxo. Mr. President! Mikey’s cursing again! Mr. President! How do you patch KDE2 under FreeBSD? Mr. President! Yesterday I had a dream. There was nobody around. The entire planet Earth was empty. Tell me, can that be done? Or where can I go to dream that again and so it would never end? Translated from the Russian

Spanish captive, Hoahwah, married twin sisters. The one wife called Double turned into a snake after eating a nest of glossy eggs. Snake Woman still lives on Mt. Scott, sleeps facing west. The sun a white skull itself bathes her on the cedar breaks. In rectangular dreams she calls the young men grandson. The other sister Tsi-yee, named after a war deed (her father charged a cavalry office knocked him off his horse then lanced him to the prairie) bore three children: Tabe titah, Namnetse, and Sam Hoahwah. Lena, Sam Hoahwah’s favorite daughter ran off with an Arapaho from Canton. Sam sent his men after her on horseback, their ranch-hand-shadows overcast the Cheyenne and Arapaho Rez. Lena said: I ain’t comin back. She bled to death on a mattress after a miscarriage. Mother couldn’t remember Lena just the car ride to Post Oak Cemetery and watching wind in the pinwheels. Mother died the same age, fish-tailing into Comanche history in a Chevy Z-28 without car insurance. Great grandfather Sam Hoahwah first Indian in southwest Oklahoma to own a car got run over with his own Model-T. His Mexican cowboy-chauffeur forgot to take it out of gear when Sam crank-started the car. Not far from his own car, Uncle Fredrick was found dead in the weeds of Cache Road, keys missing. He sang gospels in Comanche, and backup on Robby Robertson’s Contact from the Underworld of RedBoy. (Uncle liked Levon Helm better.) Frederick Jr. caught ghost sickness bicycling across Post Oak Cemetery at night. He looked past his shoulder it twisted his face. The moon mocks him now. After the incident, his girlfriend fell in love with his cousin Rusty nicknamed Rabbit who loves fried baloney and calls it Indian Steak. Rabbit’s younger brother paints abstract horse murals in empty swimming pools, and images of a 20 foot long red talking snake who calls him grandson in his dreams.

Part Four of “Pro Femina” At Samoa, hardly unpacked, I commenced planting, When I’d opened the chicken crates, built the Cochins a coop. The Reverend Mr. Claxton called, found me covered with mud, My clothes torn, my hair in a wad, my bare feet bleeding. I had started the buffalo grass in the new-made clearing. The next day the priest paid a visit. Civil but restless, I was dying to plant the alfalfa seed—gave him a packet. That evening I paced up and down, dropping melon seeds, Tomatoes and bush lima beans here and there Where I thought they would grow. We were short of food now, So I cooked up a mess of fat little parrots, disturbed At the way they suggested cages and swings and stands ... An excellent meal. I have been told the dodo survived here, And yearn for a pet on a string. And I built the pig-house. I had brought sweet coconut seed from Savage Island. I planted kidney potatoes in small earthen hills. Sowed seeds of eggplant in numerous boxes of soil, Tomato and artichoke too; half-a-dozen fine pineapple Sent over by Mr. Carruthers, the island solicitor. As fast as we eat them, we plant the tops. The kitchen a shack near the house. I made bread in the rain. October, 1890. I have been here nearly a month; Put in corn, peas, onions, radishes, lettuce. Lima beans Are already coming up. The ripening cantaloupe were stolen. Carruthers gave me mint root and grenadilla Like a bouquet; he delivered a load of trees, Two mangoes among them. I set them out in a heavy rain, Then rounded off the afternoon sowing Indian corn. Louis has called me a peasant. How I brooded! Confided it to you, diary, then crossed it out. Peasant because I delve in the earth, the earth I own. Confiding my seed and root—I too a creator? My heart melts over a bed of young peas. A blossom On the rose tree is like a poem by my son. My hurt healed by its cause, I go on planting. No one else works much. The natives take it easy; The colonials keep their shops, and a shortage of customers. The mail comes four times a month, and the gossip all day. The bars are crowded with amateur politicians, Office-seekers I named the earwig consul and king: Big talkers, with small-time conspirators drinking them in. Mr. Carruthers and I picked a site for the kitchen garden. I was planting a new lot of corn and pumpkin When a young chief arrived, laden with pineapple plants. I set them out as I talked to him on the way home. Rats and a wild hen ate the corn. Lettuce got too much sun. So I dug a new patch up the road; in the fragrant evening I confided to Louis, a puff of the sweetest scent Blows back as I cast away a handful of so-called weeds! It still hurts, his remark that I have the soul of a peasant. My vanity, like a newly felled tree, lies prone and bleeding. I clear the weeds near the house for planting maize. Sweet corn and peas are showing. I send for more seeds. I clean out the potatoes, which had rotted in their hills. Of course, RLS is not idle; he is writing A Footnote to History: How the great powers combine to carve up these islands. I discovered the ylang-ylang tree: a base for perfume, Though it suggested to me the odor of boots. Another tree is scented like pepper and spice, And one terrible tree, I am forced to say, Smells like ordure ... It nearly made me ill. Breadfruit is plentiful. I found a banana grove, Began clearing it instantly, and worked till I was dizzy. The garden looks like a graveyard: beds shaped like tombs. I plant cabbage which I loathe, so the British won’t tease me For not growing it. But behold! in the hedge Among citron and lime, many lemon trees, in full bearing. Still, I will fall to brooding before the mirror, Though Louis says he finds the peasant class “interesting.” He is forty today. I am ten years his senior. On the cleared land, the green mummy-apple, Male and female, is springing up everywhere. I discover wild ginger, turmeric, something like sugar. Roots of orange, breadfruit and mango, seeds of cacao Came with a shipment from Sydney; also eleven Young navel orange trees. The strawberry plants are rotten. I am given a handful of bees. I plant more pineapple. All fall I am cursed with asthma, rheumatics, a painful ear. Christmas. A hurricane. And the New Year begins. Louis describes it divinely to Henry James. Mr. Carruthers’ gift pineapple starts to fruit. I set out one precious rhubarb plant, pause to gloat At the ripe tomatoes, the flourishing long-podded beans. But the neighbors’ horses break in and trample the corn. Sometimes, when planting, a strange subterranean rumble —Volcanic?—vexes the earth beneath this peasant haunch. I rise up from my furrow, knuckle smooth my brow As I sniff the air, suddenly chemical, a sulphurous fume. Louis insisted on going to Sydney, fell ill again. His mother comes back with him, finds me on my knees. The old lady’s heart leaps! Alas, I am planting, not praying. We both rise at five-thirty, after dreaming of weeds. Louis describes to me endless vivid deeps: Dreams of nettle-stings, stabs from the citron’s thorns, The ants’ fiery bites, the resistance of mud and slime, The evasions of wormy roots, the dead weight of heat In the sudden puffs of air ... Louis writes till nine, Then if he’s well enough, he helps with the weeding. He writes Colvin, keeper of prints at the British Museum, “I know pleasure still ... with a thousand faces, None perfect, a thousand tongues, all broken, A thousand hands, all with scratching nails ... High among joys, I place this delight of weeding, Out here alone by the garrulous water, under the silence Of the high wind, broken by sounds of birds.” The shock of bird-calls, laughing and whistling! They mimic his name till it seems, he says, “The birds re-live the business of my day.” But the rain continues to fall on birds and weeds. The new servants fooled around with the ice machine As the house leaked and listed. Mildew spread its failure. Mrs. S. gave me some nuts, and went back to Australia. Green peppers, eggplant, tomatoes are flourishing, Asparagus also. The celery does to season soup. Avocados grow at a rate that is almost frightening. Coconuts too. I read about Stanley and Livingstone. I cured my five ulcers with calomel, wished I could tell Stanley the remedy. Instead, I made perfume. The servants feared devils, so I planted the orange grove alone. For two months I misplaced this diary ... War is in the air, talk of killing all whites. I bought coffee trees, rose trees, and Indian beans, Then went to Fiji to rest, and to get more seeds From a former Kew gardener. An Indian in a shop Told me how to raise Persian melon and cauliflower And a radish that turns into a turnip when it grows up. I came home to a burgeoning world: cacao, custard squash. The new house was finished, and painted peacock blue. The jealous old cat bit off the new cat’s toes. My mother-in-law returned with her Bible and lady’s maid; My daughter, her family, and my son Lloyd came too. The relatives had a terrible row. Mrs. S. refused To pray with the servants. I threw up my hands! My diary entries grow farther and farther apart. I wrote life was a strain. Later, someone crossed it out. In pain again, from an aneurysm inside my head ... I planted more and more cacao, and a form of cherry tree, Tobacco and rubber, taught how by Mr. Sketchley. I planted more cacao through an epidemic of ’flu. Three hundred seeds in baskets broke through the ground. I get almost no time to write. I have been planting ... Four kinds of cabbage are doing very well. Mr. Haggard, the land commissioner, come to dine, Points out a weed which makes excellent eating Cooked like asparagus. I shall try it very soon. Now, when the Reverend Mr. Claxton comes to call, I refuse to see him. I am tired of the Claxtons. The political situation grows grim. I rage at Louis Who toasts, “Her Blessed Majesty the Queen,” then aggressively Throbbing, turns to my American son To say he may drink to the President afterward If he likes. I am writing this down Hoping Louis will see it later, and be ashamed Of his childishness and bad taste. (This will be erased.) Because war is near, the Germans stop growing cacao. Captain Hufnagel offers me all the seeds I can use. So now we are blazing with cacao fever, The whole family infected. Six hundred plants set out! The verandah tracked with mud, and the cacao litter. Mrs. S. upset by the mess. Twelve hundred cacaos planted. Joe, my son-in-law, planted his thousandth tree today. The tree onions make large bulbs but don’t want to seed. Most vigorous: sunflower, watermelon—weeds! The jelly from berries out of the bush is delicious; Lovely perfume from massoi, citron, vanilla, and gum. The peanuts are weeded while Joe plays on his flute. I plant cabbage by moonlight, set out more cacao. The heart of a death’s-head moth beats a tattoo in my hand. Planted coffee all day, and breadfruit, five beauties ... Planted coffee the better part of the day, eight plants. In the nursery, three times that many. Planted coffee ... Painted the storm shutters. Planted coffee all morning. I found a heap of old bones in a bush near the sty; Two heads and a body: a warrior died with his prize. Louis gave the bones a funeral and a burial. A series of hurricanes: Louis writes to The Times Of “the foul colonial politics.” I send to New York for seeds: Southern Cross cabbage, eggplant, sweet potato And two thousand custard apples. Louis’ own seed, David Balfour, is growing. I wrote nothing From June till the end of this year; too busy planting. The Samoan princes are getting nearer to war. It pains me to write this: my son-in-law has gone native In a spectacular way. Belle is divorcing him. Austin, my grandson, is in school in Monterey. I have not, I believe, mentioned Mrs. Stevenson recently. She has gone back to Scotland. The first breadfruit bore. Belle and I go on sketching expeditions To the hostile Samoan camps, stop in town for ginger beer. Mr. Haggard begged us to stay in town Because he bitterly wanted women to protect. I suggested to him that I and my daughter Could hide under his table and hand him cartridges At the window, to complete the romantic effect. It is clear that Mr. Haggard is Ryder’s brother! He said, “You’d sell your life for a bunch of banana trees.” I’ve given permission to most of the “boys” To go to the races. Lloyd has put up the lawn tennis things. Mr. Gurr, the neighbor, rushes in to say war has begun. We all race to the mission. Eleven heads have been taken. Later: Mr. Dine’s cousin received a head smeared with black (The custom is to return them to the bereaved). He washed it off and discovered it was his brother. He sat there, holding his brother’s head in his hands, Kissing it, bathing it with his tears. A scandal arose Because the heads of three girls have been taken as well (Unheard of before in Samoa), returned wrapped in silk to their kin. At Malie, the warriors danced a head-hunter’s pantomime; The men who had taken heads carried great lumps of raw pork Between their teeth, cut in the semblance of heads. I stopped writing this. Too hysterical with migraine. Also, people find where I hide it, and strike things out. Our favorite chief is exiled for life. The war winds down. Louis works on his masterpiece,The Weir of Hermiston. Well, I’ve kept him alive for eight more years, While his dear friends would have condemned him to fog and rain So they might enjoy his glorious talk in London, Though it be the end of him. Fine friends! except for James. Later: At six, Louis helped with the mayonnaise, When he put both hands to his head, said, “Oh, what a pain! Do I look strange?” I said no, not wanting to frighten him. He was never conscious again. In two hours he died. Tonight, the chiefs with their axes are digging a path To the top of the mountain. They will dig his grave. I will leave here as soon as I can, and never return, Except to be buried beside him. I will live like a gipsy In my wild, ragged clothes, until I am old, old. I will have pretty gardens wherever I am, But never breadfruit, custard apples, grenadilla, cacao, Pineapple, ylang-ylang, citron, mango, cacao, Never again succumb to the fever of planting.

“Lincoln?— Well, I was in the old Second Maine, The first regiment in Washington from the Pine Tree State. Of course I didn’t get the butt of the clip; We was there for guardin’ Washington— We was all green. “I ain’t never ben to the theayter in my life— I didn’t know how to behave. I ain’t never ben since. I can see as plain as my hat the box where he sat in When he was shot. I can tell you, sir, there was a panic When we found our President was in the shape he was in! Never saw a soldier in the world but what liked him. “Yes, sir. His looks was kind o’ hard to forget. He was a spare man, An old farmer. Everything was all right, you know, But he wasn’t a smooth-appearin’ man at all— Not in no ways; Thin-faced, long-necked, And a swellin’ kind of a thick lip like. “And he was a jolly old fellow—always cheerful; He wasn’t so high but the boys could talk to him their own ways. While I was servin’ at the Hospital He’d come in and say, ‘You look nice in here,’ Praise us up, you know. And he’d bend over and talk to the boys— And he’d talk so good to ’em—so close— That’s why I call him a farmer. I don’t mean that everything about him wasn’t all right, you understand, It’s just—well, I was a farmer— And he was my neighbor, anybody’s neighbor. I guess even you young folks would ‘a’ liked him.”

All fathers in Western civilization must have a military origin. The ruler, governor, yes, he is was the general at one time or other. And George Washington won the hearts of his country—the rough military man with awkward sincere drawing-room manners. My father; have you ever heard me speak of him? I seldom do. But I had a father, and he had military origins—or my origins from him are military, militant. That is, I remember him only in uniform. But of the navy, 30 years a chief petty officer, always away from home. It is rough/hard for me to speak now. I'm not used to talking about him. Not used to naming his objects/ objects that never surrounded me. A woodpecker with fresh bloody crest knocks at my mouth. Father, for the first time I say your name. Name rolled in thick Polish parchment scrolls, name of Roman candle drippings when I sit at my table alone, each night, name of naval uniforms and name of telegrams, name of coming home from your aircraft carrier, name of shiny shoes. name of Hawaiian dolls, name of mess spoons, name of greasy machinery, and name of stencilled names. Is it your blood I carry in a test tube, my arm, to let fall, crack, and spill on the sidewalk in front of the men I know, I love, I know, and want? So you left my house when I was under two. being replaced by other machinery (my sister), and I didn’t believe you left me. This scene: the trunk yielding treasures of a green fountain pen, heart shaped mirror, amber beads, old letters with brown ink, and the gopher snake stretched across the palm tree in the front yard with woody trunk like monkey skins, and a sunset through the skinny persimmon trees. You came walking, not even a telegram or post card from Tahiti. Love, love, through my heart like ink in the thickest nibbed pen, black and flowing into words You came, to me, and I at least six. Six doilies of lace, six battleship cannon, six old beerbottles, six thick steaks, six love letters, six clocks running backwards, six watermelons, and six baby teeth, a six cornered hat on six men's heads, six lovers at once or one lover at sixes and sevens; how I confuse all this with my dream walking the tightrope bridge with gold knots over the mouth of an anemone/tissue spiral lips and holding on so that the ropes burned as if my wrists had been tied If George Washington had not been the Father of my Country it is doubtful that I would ever have found a father. Father in my mouth, on my lips, in my tongue, out of all my womanly fire, Father I have left in my steel filing cabinet as a name on my birth certificate, Father I have left in the teeth pulled out at dentists’ offices and thrown into their garbage cans, Father living in my wide cheekbones and short feet, Father in my Polish tantrums and my American speech, Father, not a holy name, not a name I cherish but the name I bear, the name that makes me one of a kind in any phone book because you changed it, and nobody but us has it, Father who makes me dream in the dead of night of the falling cherry blossoms, Father who makes me know all men will leave me if I love them, Father who made me a maverick, a writer, a namer, name/father, sun/father, moon/father, bloody mars/father, other children said, “My father is a doctor,” or “My father gave me this camera,” or “My father took me to the movies,” or “My father and I went swimming,” but my father is coming in a letter once a month for a while, and my father sometimes came in a telegram but mostly my father came to me in sleep, my father because I dreamed in one night that I dug through the ash heap in back of the pepper tree and found a diamond shaped like a dog, and my father called the dog and it came leaping over to him and he walked away out of the yard down the road with the dog jumping and yipping at his heels, my father was not in the telephone book in my city; my father was not sleeping with my mother at home; my father did not care if I studied the piano; my father did not care what I did; and I thought my father was handsome and I loved him and I wondered why he left me alone so much, so many years in fact, but my father made me what I am, a lonely woman, without a purpose, just as I was a lonely child without any father. I walked with words, words, and names, names. Father was not one of my words. Father was not one of my names. But now I say, “George, you have become my father, in his 20th century naval uniform. George Washington, I need your love; George, I want to call you Father, Father, my Father,” Father of my country, that is, me. And I say the name to chant it. To sing it. To lace it around me like weaving cloth. Like a happy child on that shining afternoon in the palmtree sunset with her mother’s trunk yielding treasures, I cry and cry, Father, Father, Father, have you really come home?

— for Dennis Brutus This year the leaves turn red green black freedom colors each leaf each stitch of grass. I am amazed at my sweet harvest. The prison door has opened and a nation’s heart is released. I am full having spent my greediness in a ritual of joy.

In September 1607 the village of Fianaise Bhréagach was hit by an unidentified disease, taking the lives of all the villagers. The village was razed and official records expunged. In 2007 an account written by the local undertaker was found buried in the roots of a tree in the quarantined village’s square which unearthed details of this disaster. They sent a horse along the roads to say our town had been closed in, its bloodied hooves had been unshod. The shoes were kept to save the iron or bless the fate of those who stayed across the glens or down the coast. This horse’s message came our way while sentries occupied their posts, the note was tied around its neck declaring death was soon to reach where all would feel its fevered knock: the butcher’s shop, the mill, the church. The hardest village men played tough until the store of ale ran dry; the women stopped their mouths with cloth and held their husbands as they died. Disease took hold with sudden force. We thought that we could hush the moans so skinned and burned the flagging horse and let the fire consume its bones. My children’s skin turned cold and flushed. Acquainted as I was with death I saw their end and held their trust so cut their throats and sucked their breath. I dug their graves and then some more.

Finis Poloniae— a phrase/figure of speech, that apart from its literal historical meaning stands in for the end of empires. Charged atmosphere, everything breathes damply, epicene air—if it could think anything it would think un-European things like monsoons and yellow seas. Greatness bears itself to death, says its last words to itself, a foreign-sounding swansong, generally misunderstood, sometimes tolerated— Finis Poloniae— perhaps on a rainy day, bummer, but in this instance a sound of happiness followed by solo horn, and then a hydrangea, most placid of flowers, capable of standing out in the rain into November, dropped softly into the grave.