Fall ’66

Arturumque etiam sub terris bella moventem.
Green bearded Arthur with his men still blinking from underground wars
Comes crawling out of the ivy. They fumble
With their weapons. Gather at the federal table
A party of ancient hoods
Nodding in the blue shadow
Pirates waiting for the new raids.
Infernal smoke
Fills Washington and Camelot
And ashes cut the sight of red-eyed intelligence.

Now Patria sets her stone vision
Toward the computer castles in the vortex;
Is critical of mist;
She alarms the police
And points a solid marble finger
In a general direction:
(“There, in the Far East, are the malefactors!”)
The granite nation is ugly now
But firm, consoled
By a coat of rhetoric
And soil of pigeons.

Local songs call all the guards to order.
The earth shakes. Will all the concrete
Stagger and fall?

Or will these armed phantoms
Swim death’s ocean and win?

Win what? The earth shakes.
The war is busy in the underground
And hell is ready in the submarines.