Two Daily Sonnets

The Anxiety of Perfectable Love

Nothing can be less satisfying than an argument   

so without rhyme or reason that all that was meant

disappears into absolute certainty, that one

plus one is always two, that every action has a reaction

equal and opposite, and that what is said is all

there is to say, without metaphor or midrash: the sun

will always rise, no matter what the weather, fall

brings down the golden leaves, though many hover

until the first fresh breezes of the spring,

and genial smiles play out for a superficial lover

and his mistress coy as ever, coil and spring.

Cupid’s lovely arrow never leaves his quiver

until the rhetoric has sailed across the doubtful river.

Murder, Scapegoats and National Interest

Two things so much alike, like a mirror and its image,

The perfect goats in the Temple, the sons of Eve,

The nations on either side the river, until the age

When one grows weary, the other uncontrollable;

They eye each other warily, each rolls up his sleeve,

and sets to work, and one becomes Abel,

the other Cain, one takes the priest’s red thread,

the other the hangman’s rope and romps away

into the desert until he tumbles down a cliff and breaks

apart, scattering into the darkness until dead,

thus ensuring that the crimson turns to cream; they say

he now accompanies the primate to the altar, makes

his bow and is dispatched with all our sins:

thus over there, on the other side, they remain

forever hapless slaves, while here we know the ins

and outs of everything and rule our own domain.