Long time ago on Memorial Day
we would recall sacrifices we made
on the corporate battlefields, and laid
flowers, grown to die, along the pathway
to the golden bough where dreams were buried
and myth was stitched and loomed by children's hands --
carpets and tapestries of wonder. Bands
brassed and drummed and fifed, notes flew and flurried.
These days the ceremonies seem so tired;
a species run to seed or exhaustion,
the vivre joy gone, the deal turned Faustian,
and Cain's returned from the wilderness -- wired.
Cryptomnesia's all the rage and ruin:
Did we make love in Paris or Wuhan?
