NewPoetry

Richard Greene

 

— August 2024 —

I was well enough to come south again

and drive through rustbelt states, their terrain

of disenchantment, among the smokestacks

spewing particulates, high-strung catwalks

over steel mills. Detroit’s tearing down

the Packard Plant no one wanted to own

but now demolition too has gone wrong.

Anyone could take those ruins for a song.

What right have I to talk of falling Rome?

I’m a foreigner with privileges. My home

is north and east, but who’s ever away

from America? Its long election day

will happen in my living room, my phone,

my laptop. These days no one lives alone  ̶

we are all inhabited by money

and meanings the empire made. My journey

just to see an old friend in Missouri

is like a falling into history.

I suppose Yeats would have spoken of gyres,

an age grown terrible as it expires.

*

But is this my last time past the border?

I fear a dirty war, and where murder

has been private, the state will take a hand.

There’s a binder somewhere, a campaign planned,

orders drafted for the caudillo’s pen.

They have said as much. If you have spoken

out loud or read strange books that are outlawed,

or your papers are just a little flawed,

they may take you. Those kids who held up signs

about Gaza may stand tearful in long lines

awaiting their own disappearances.

I see the polls but don’t like the chances,

speak hopefully but fear it’ll all go wrong.

Deaths may be for as little as a song  ̶

it happened to Victor Jara. So long

ago, in an east Toronto kitchen

where the guests were Latin American

I met two brave hopeless Guatemalans

seeking help from churches and unions

for human rights back home, Michael Czerny’s

friends, people he’d met on his journeys

into the killing grounds. One man had lost

his brother to the squads  ̶  the usual cost

of speaking out of turn in a lawless place.

Young as I was, I could see in his face,

with everything else he’d had to endure,

the anticipation of death – I’m sure

it came. This war too may come with a touch

upon the shoulder. They have said as much.