Trinity and Hiroshima
And those prehistoric heroes
Enabled by metallurgy and mechanical advantage
Plowshares beaten into swords
Unashamed of their rapes murders offhanded cruelties
We have plenty of wine left from when we sacked the city of the Cicons
And for millennia princelings and charlatans
Styled themselves each a noble Hector or a furious Ajax
Epitomes of honor and of the honorable few
Or else flamboyant strategists like the Ithacan liar
Illiterate and boorish
They entrusted their stories to servile biographers
Adept at giving atrocity the shape of significance and the charm of style
But who in the process bequeath shape and charm
And yes beauty and truth

As when the report of a catastrophe hisses across the radio
And all say silently or aloud It is as I feared
For the technology indispensable for human life
Has turned yet again against human life
Wielded yet again by the masters of strategy and honor
And the reporter’s words speak not of them
And their vicious hubris
Or of the dangerous fuel or the threatening hooked cross
But only of the dead the burned and lacerated
With the cry Oh the humanity
While a weakling in Oklahoma
Every man his own Hitler
Exterminates scores of innocent with a truckload of fertilizer
So we read the one great poem
We see the picture of the firefighter the toddler in his arms
And hear the beautiful song of sorrow and suffering
Love for the child
Dread for the beautiful child