Napoleon Reviendra

some ironist has scrawled

across a Metro wall in cherry lipstick-

one more savior set to rise again,

returning north from exile

like the sun toward spring-and on the train

from Fontainebleau to Paris, in the sallow

January rain light

the hedges veering off through stubble fields,

their leafless brambles drained to a shade of cinders,

looked spent past any chance

of rising to another year's exactions:

exhausted at the prospect of insurgent season

beyond season always ending

here-cowering insensate, cold in the failing light,

bogged down in the mud and snow on the road back

from Moscow. But nature's sex wars

spare them foresight: overcome

by the simple compulsion of the sun

they bud again and flower,

sap-swollen tendrils leafing to embrace

the same infatuate exuberance

this year as last-incapable

of sickening at the spectacle of their own

repeated wilful yielding to blind need.