Names burst through the postulated deliverance
Like sound policies and noble vestiges that deflate
Hear the queries that surface from the milling crowd
Is this the time for panic for rage
Or for some other hoarse vehemence
More people died in their beds in their stirrups
In their hitherto peaceable or relatively placid quarters
Deaths timely and untimely as happen at all times
And those near death and those waking from perilous births
The polished dispatches report dispassionately
As from the absence or the suppression of passion
Proclamations of intensity in grim composure

Leaves fall through inveterate spirals
Woodpeckers speed their intelligent courses
Bats pursue the opposite tack of fandangos in space
In clean well-lit rooms systematizers contemplate
Reckonings for the colonization of Mars
So eager are their masters to flee the planet
To whose dissolution they have contributed mightily
As if colonization worked out so well the last time
The ancient order of Ulysses
To strive to seek to lead and not to yield
Never surrender
They cry at the very moment they run