The Impressment

Days like today we are the clouds' men

And what they do all day is our concern.

Taken with their success and clean-edged march

Against the sky in rout, we join up;

The moon recruits too on certain nights

When the clouds run before, bellied or enfilade.

But tented strangely later we wish ourselves free,

Seeing the cause false and us poorly led:

The authority of clouds is mirror-practiced,

Their maneuvers are pieced out by espionage

From the discarded dome system of the sky,

Their military secrets are all useless data

For secrecy's sake kept, for an air of mystery

And clouds do not take into account the mixed 'duties

To anyone's invalid father, troth to a cripple,

Or an old borrowing, kept in peacetime mind

And asking payment; do not reckon,

In other words, on the complicated day

That anyone wakes to the sky blank blue or grey.