In Our Late Empire, Love

drops from upper air,
                                         like rain,
clinging brightly
                                 to the fresh-cut hair
of children
                          and the infantry:
all hail
                 the clicking heel, all will
regale
                 the shrinking light
with grains
                      of wedding rice, of salt,
of sands as fit
                              a last brassy parade:
the marching band
                                      will soften
with its growing-distant
                                               drum,
the oscillating hand
                                        will stop
its waving
                     soon enough, soon
enough;
                   here now, the motorcade
hums
                gaily through the citizens’
applause
                       and the children’s eyes
bronze faintly
                             with the glint
of far-off fireworks,
                                    or firebombs,
or falling evening stars.

Credit

Copyright © 2014 by Malachi Black. Used with permission of the author.

About this Poem

“‘In Our Late Empire, Love’ emerged from a curious sense of living in the political equivalent of Keats’s ‘posthumous existence’—a post-apex, late-imperial America—and I became interested in the idea of a domestic analogue to the ‘letter from the field.’  Recent events at home and abroad were of influence as well.”
—Malachi Black