ABOUT US

“The Dreadnought”

When the night at last cools
Settled into the roost
And all thrumming lay still
In the volume reduced
A dreadnought approaches.
One step, then two.

Like violet-dyed ribbons
Cast over the surge
Of a trumpet in time
To the tune of a dirge
It emerged from the din.
One step, then two.

It is slow to arrive.
It has always been slow
Since the crier called out
Many decades ago
To the flow of the crowd,
“One step, then two.”

“A burning birch hidden
The sea cloaked in oil
The peak’s darkened hue
Ailing life in the soil
The toil of the world.
One step, then two.”

A charter concealed
By a man dressed in slate
Serpentined past the prophet,
Slid up to the gate
Of the great golden spire.
One step, then two.

The spidery marble
The leather-clad chairs
The crackle of power
The chant of the heirs
And a prayer wrapped in bills.
One step, then two.

The dictates are fashioned
In erudite lines
On thin sheets of paper
Collated and signed
In the brine of her blood.
One step, then two.

And then, from that tower
A white wrinkled claw
Clad in sapphirine rings
Opened wide like the maw
Of a condor immersed
In the juice of its prey.

The hand stretched above
All the downward-faced heads
Of the unaware passers
In foreign-borne threads
Casting red-tinted thoughts
From the bench and the bar.

As one’s final vision
Is tatters-clad Death
And his leisurely reaching
For eyes dried of breath,
So the ravenous fingers
Continued to stretch

Toward the sores of the atmosphere,
Gaping and pulsing,
Incensed by the plumes
Of the smokestacks convulsing,
And dulcetly plucked at
Their roan-mottled rings

‘Til they writhed and out widened
Like lips doused in terror.
The bony hand sated,
Its work free of error,
Returned to its body.
One step, then two.

Our heads are no longer
Weighed down by the day
And are free to bear witness
In helpless dismay
To the gray-suited plot
Laying waste off the stock.

The core is exposed.
There is nothing but dread.
And the swift-moving masses
Now stare straight ahead
For some breadcrumb of hope
In a darkening field.

Our children will gasp,
Every lungful a treat,
All our legacy projects
Subsumed in defeat.
We are meat with a purpose,
To carve out the stone,

To shape what is solid
Of its own volition
And furnish our image
And finish our mission,
A wish in the well.
One step, then two.

If ever a story,
Our role on the Earth,
It ends with a punchline
Of conflated worth
And the birth of our death
In the search for our life.

And you are no wonder
And I am no wonder
And we will be buried
In desert, in tundra,
No richer than poorer
No better than worse.

A burning birch hidden
The sea cloaked in oil
The peak’s darkened hue
Ailing life in the soil.
The gait of the world.
One step, then two.