Having to stop a government

Not since that invasion,
announced histrionically
as not an invasion, of
Cambodia in 1970, have
Americans felt so close
to their natural obliga-
tion to set aside the
government purporting
to act for them. Their
sense of this would re-
quire another 4 years,
ultimately, to be vin-
dicated in connection
with a violation of an 
office of politicians.

How ironically close
to mockery, the facts
must sound, today. And
they are.

          Coldly the sun shone down on the moonlit scene.

          Our committee stirred uneasily in its sleep.

          Better not know too much too soon all about it.

          The knees of grammar and syntax touched each other,

          Furtive in pleasure under the oaken table.

          The river lay not moving under the light

          Of the shadowy earthly winter lunar scene.

          The ends of justice are determined in

          The conditions of our sleep. The spellbound scene

          Arranged itself in a traditional way.

          Transfixed and perfectly still. Unspoken agreements

          Spoke volumes on the bookshelves of the room.

We know the scent of stir-

ring from a slumber fed

by loyalty and trust; the

thirst for honest stories

heaves a warm, extracted 

must of provenance, reborn.

         _____

This posting was prepared be-

fore the government announced

its withdrawal of the United

States from co-operation with

what has come to be called,

the Paris Accord on Climate;

and the point of view given

above is based on vastly more

than policy distinctions. But

the day will come, and may it

be soon, when the government's

act toward that Accord pales,

utterly, beneath the tone and

texture of its pathetically de-

ranged arguments and excuses,

flooded with complexes of per-

secution, victimhood, tribal

piety and remorseless vengeance.

Our generation was not living,

when Hitler announced his with-

drawal from the Treaty of Ver-

sailles, but that pathology we

have all been raised to recog-

nize, is grotesquely projected

as patriotism by this government.

It is not well, it does not mean

well, and it can not bode well.

David Ferry

Of No Country I Know

    Dwelling Places

      The Committee

1993

University of Chicago Press, 1999©