3331. WHILE THE GILDED PROFESSORS RULE

WHILE THE GILDED 

PROFESSORS RULE

Actually, I'd prefer the million broad provisions of

another grounded life to the wan material I'm now

presented  -  I read the Contingent Gospels, I read

the Fall of Rome, I've read Tristram Shandy, Moll

Flanders, Harvest Home. I'd much prefer instead,

these days, to come around the winding road, to espy

old Beacon Mountain, or think of Wind Gap; passages

through Nature in the gloam. These are, to me, newer

things  -  small places I've been, things I've seen. The

wind upon the buttercup, the hummingbird stuck flapping

in the air; all honey, all nectar, all blood and all good.

-

(Why do you go on so, parrying your words with this

soulful lament)? I do not have to answer! Gilded professors

and General Pomp, each have made me (just as well)

somehow sick with a certain, pointed hatred. Your

soldiers, like your ideas, have died already. Your

horrid, arms-bearing ideologues merely make me laugh.

I hope you die, in fact, each and every soldier you produce,

each motor-tronic moron you enact. Live by the sword,

die by the sword  -  yet for all of you, I hope it happens

twice; I hope you die anew, and you never come

home to enter my land again.

-

I've made the adjustments, corrected my ways  -

now all I need do is live out my days.