Amherst echoes, plain and clear

                 It makes no difference abroad -

                 The Seasons - fit - the same -

                 The mornings blossom into Noons -

                 And split their Pods of Flame -

I tried this at home,
reluctant to go to
Guantánamo; and rang
up Yoo and Addington,
Tenet and Dick Cheney, 
for technical advice;
alas, to no avail.

One can just imagine
these guys' dismay,
not to be continuing:

                     Auto da Fe - and Judgment -
                     Are nothing to the Bee -
                     His separation from his Rose -
                     To Him - sums Misery -

The papers are all full of the frolic the President enjoyed the other night in Congress, at his hosts' expense. But you know, the papers. I didn't see him being called out on his immaculately empty boast of ending torture, in his announcement that he wouldn't stoop to it. Others have, others may, with his permission; and he knows there's ink to spill on his unconscionable, if not complicit reduction of those crimes to a poster of his propriety.

Until this man secures passage of effective legislation to criminal-ize torture, not blinking past it, he's up to his tanline in it. Na-ture's creatures call his conduct to account. A Presidency is not a podcast, it's a primordial trust.

                Wild flowers - kindle in the Woods -

                The Brooks slam - all the Day -

                No Black bird bates His Banjo -

                For passing Calvary -

Emily Dickinson

Number 686
  i    verse 1 of  3
  ii   verse 3
  iii  verse 2

Helen Vendler

Dickinson

  Selected Poems 

  and Commentaries

Harvard University Press, 2010©