The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
The day they ask if you’d rather
be burned or buried,
the president crashes
his bike into a sand dune.
Sitting in the long waiting room
between seconds, I notice you,
made god-like by your pain,
wrapping the world around your finger,
pushing the cursor forward & back,
pausing for glints of detail
in the periphery of the shaky video:
the spokes of the wheels drenched
in the reflection of the whitecaps
slapping the shore in the distance,
the surprised look of the man
collapsed on his side, useless
as a bouquet of lilies
sagging next to a hospital bed,
fallen before he ever had the chance
to learn he was falling.
It comforts you, how in a time
before all this history,
something brutal & long gone
like a sabertooth tiger
is slowly licking its cub
into a deep, peaceful sleep.
Down the hall in the children’s ward,
we watch as a little boy draws
thick lines on a toy horse
with a sharpie, inventing the zebra.
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Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation
