Arlington Cemetery

Their monuments come in two guises: grandiose and subtle.
The subtle ones move you. A black cataract of names
Spilling onto the grass of the Vietnam. The Kennedy flame
With four stones, one marked merely ‘Daughter’. They induce pathos
Without seeming to try. The grandiose smack of bullish attempts
To mimic other empires that rose and fell as this one must.

On the Potomac, the breeze is capricious.
Occasionally the boat tell-tale takes wing,
The sail puffs. Then it dies, the water’s glassy still
And we drift. Helicopters buzz. Pentagon gooks hide in
Forested banks. Never felt quite so much like Nam as this,
On a sun-kissed day, in the company of friends.

Bar crawling. Big Hunt to Madam’s Organ.
The Addis Ababa Sports Bar. Wind up in Mulligans.
Whisky all the way. In one the third floor roof is raised
And the power sky rains down. Pressed shirts
Drink pitchers and talk turkey. We do the A to Z,
Once a decade thing. Steve says he needs the facts,
But the spin’s so great they’ve slipped away.

‘That’s the place to put it’, the cheerful cloakroom man
Grins as I take the card out of my hat in the Library of
Congress. Earlier we’d sat in the Supreme Court
Calculating a martyr’s chances (better than even).
They grant membership without pain and tell us about Brazil.
Liberty is everywhere, like cleaning fluid. It lights up their smiles.


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