I was Goya but now pretty cows
in vague comprehension roam regal
the once catacombed earth; the platforms
of chided performers jut bare
and up comes Lazarus one rainy
spring moment to bewail his fellow’s follies;
seizing the pulpit he laments
and shrieks–pleads politic to cows
who murmur bovine dissension–
then fades in ghostly prophetic stature,
the last heralded heretic beseeching
with a crackling, increasingly incoherent platitude
And the fields of recess
are cemeteries newly etched
And gravestones obstruct
the passage of children
Invisible Democracy! the amphitheater
echoes whitish and serene, relaxed
and uncrowded in the leisure
grinning cracks, breeding
cement with grass which crass
invades to vacate desolate ideologies;
the poor players have exhausted
their scenes, and sun-exposed their shadows
at last but now pretty cows
commend the landscape:
mooing concessions, merds, cud, udders
fantastic and untapped–this would
have irked me Goya but now pretty cows
inhabit the kingdom