The Saints Go Marching In

“Voted that the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof; voted, that the earth is given to the Saints; voted, that we are the Saints.”—minutes of the town council of Milford, Connecticut, 1640

Sanctity

Of sanctity we make no bones:

On stolen land, we build our homes;

All countries in which men abide

Knew slavery and genocide.

Don't confess to ancestral crimes—

You were not there in those bad times.

Just be quite sure that we can say:

“They fake things fairer now today!”

Epigraph source: Alan Taylor, American Colonies (New York: Penguin Books, 2001), 192.

The Pitiless Bronze

Ours is not a world propitious to Poetry,

Though for poets’ tales it is, with screwball odds:

Homer’s “pitiless bronze” slew living, breathing bods!

Uhlans charged

Nazi Panzers at Krojanty.*

Fishing boats trump aircraft carriers in the Pinkish Sea.

* Evidently Polish cavalry did not in fact charge Nazi tanks at Krojanty in 1939, but did charge machine guns.