Classic Poem

Knowing more than they knew,
knowing everything, really, or
more than we want to know,
we dismiss them now, in their waistcoats,
their hose, their grandiloquence. If
we see them at all in our minds,
it's a kind of stage-play, a costume
and period-piece. They Strike
Attitudes, Gaze-Afar-
Into-The-Future.

They don't see us there.
Wouldn't know us if they did. . . . Still,
who could help striking attitudes
when every right-foot-advanced
broached the New Millennium;
and who would not Gaze-Afar
when all the History there was
he had written that morning: " A-little-
corruption-is-a-necessary-engine-
of-government. " ... Oh say,
Mr. Hamilton, can't you see —
Afar, of course — through the bronze
and the bird's dung — a Trail of Tears,
a Slaughter in The Wilderness,
A Gilded Age an Empire
a Poisoning of the Earth
an Apocalypse? — You, aloft there
with the one foot advanced, the Gaze
infinite, leading the way.











By permission of the author.