A false dawn awakens us.
The right time, when the cloud-facts
explain us to each other
and absorb the spilled light.
An era of rhetorical skies
precedes another great war
with all its pomp and circumstance.
Where will we pitch a tent when
ghost armies occupy our basement
with feint and struggle all night?
You want the sentiments to pile
like rugs from the Middle East.
You want the bass clef to dominate.
I’d rather lie on the sofa
and act as a cat trampoline
while the political class sheds
the last ethical gesture and stands
naked and shameless in the snow.
Christmas may or may not
arrive soon enough to save us
from bellowing little villages
armed with naïve ambitions.
We’ll drive through these places the way
Einstein drove through time and space.
Can we simper ourselves to sleep
for another hour while the clouds
argue among themselves? The fact
of the fall of Troy still lingers.