Significant Suspensions

As the kings and chairmen, ministers and presidents
contend for countrysides, one wonders
about all that one envisions:

all that one. One's hold on everything,
one's whole will-hold. Shrunk to a dot
in a field of dotted swiss,
or the pin prick in
a cheap French letter, shot
of rue from Bourbon Street, or
ooze from Easy, you essay

to go on. You go on. But Rome will burn
before you learn to fiddle. Rings
your fingers would love will only
discompose your nose. You dream of Rose and her
revisions: you get glasses. Men who should be saying "I for one

am sorry for the things I've done" have been assigned instead
to say somebody's masses. And the shop girl will not profit
from the rabble-rouser's holier-than-thou. It's close to home

the far gleam hits: the sun (your own big be-all-and-end-all)
scatters into glitter, glints of scat: the coin and hubcap,
foil from Lucky Strike and stings from jar,
or old ear-ringsŠStill, oddly, one

lives on, continually torn between the two significant suspicions:
on the one hand that in all the scheme of things we matter
marvelously little; on the other, that we are

the scheme of things.


Heather McHugh