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The Loser
Before then the city will be wasted utterly, for he has fallen who defended it-11aD Not quite sublimed in this, the ample South that rounds our imaged selves this year, irregular and sere, sir, we fall quiet. Sounds shape the well we kiss. Where have we come from to keep such company and easy innocence, sharing the Greek pretense of gifts, the clement sea, dreams' propagation? Whose child are you, made glad by nothing you can touch, or in the mind confess? Who thinks of love the less, mistaken overmuch by wars we never had? The changeling you are fares less well and happy than the semblance we avoid. That anagoge alloyed unmans in you the man fair copies can't repair. Cannot your verses win your world back into view again until each scans? Your Grandfather, his lands, recede like tides from you, high now and dry within. Kentucky, Arkansas, the bluffs that serrulate what the red clay retains of density with veins blue as today the slate Carolina sky, see-saw in your misprision: now archaic, somehow trite. There is nothing close enough to lend repose or pity or delight, the states have fallen so. Your name and passion fail. All histories lie rife, your speaking incompletion. Myself as guilty con this poem of your life: alike, unbeautiful.