3759. THINK, THINK OF THE BLASPHEMERS

THINK, THINK OF 

THE BLASPHEMERS

(Independence Day)
Such malediction! The white swans of Coollee,

even they squawk. On high, a lone mark of

Cygnus - a wary congregation - sweeps across

the sky, and the fat silver nickel of the full moon

so slowly drops into the sad horizon.

- 

A little girl is skipping rope now,

to a tune I've never heard before.

Out here, on the Memorial Square,

once again they are reading off the

names of the military dead. It is once

more the Fourth of July, and nothing

here makes any sense  -  they just did

this all at the end of May. But now

every day is Decoration Day.

-

 It is so quiet, somehow, you could hear

a cannon drop  -  the dumb dead, the stupid

dead, the wartime fodder, the cannon feed at

the artillery shed. We who are here among the

living are the ones in need  -  the lively, the quick.

We stay here somehow to memorialize all that

we can : these dismal fireworks of a thumping

flash, all the blasted raconteurs of hill and gorge.

-

 And so, whatever that all is, it is nothing  -

an Independence Day of joy and happiness

and freedom and range! Now that too has been

changed to the dead. Yes, yes, I have heard all

that before. Now, let the dead alone. The flags

are already wilting in their cut.

-

Thunderous, the lolling noise  -  that crackle pop

boom of gunpowder sludge and firework flame, they

each conspire to make the injudicious range of noise

and color splash on in the once-dark sky. Too much!

Let us move away and no longer espy what we do not need.