"A Bedtime Story."
If the stable boy who picks up a bow and marches
with the archers stayed home and dreamt
of becoming king, the old moral, every conquest
ends with a handful of sand.
The rape, the quake, the legs a-tremble, even these words,
silence itself, blood-spattered corn.
No one is left unalloyed, wheezing in the ragged corn.
And men who disagreed since the days of Fidenae,
now shaking hands, now sharing daughters and goats.