Classic Poem

'The Breaking of Nations'
a horse cough, as history laments
its own passing. What ghosts
urge these riots? Memory is dead,
flags and banners dissolve back
into thoroughfares. The East
is reliquary; bone splinter and shrapnel
mixed in daily. What ghosts urge
these riots? Barbarism looms in
the triumph of immediacy, a final exit
from the Garden of Eden, bombs
bristling moments ago at cockcrow.