Not today, though,
in the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
not today he isn’t.
The entrance to the room
is barricaded with plywood permitting
only a partial glimpse
of the General: upstanding, unfazed
by the turbulent ice floes,
unwavering gaze fixed on, well,
plywood. The impeccable turnout,
in democratically dun-coloured mantle
(lined with scarlet),
thrown in dramatic folds
over shoulders bearing the weight
of a nascent nation –
all for nothing today. He shall not
reach the far shore, shall not
trounce the Hessian mercenaries;
and this great nation shall never,
now, be birthed – and not
just this room, no, the entire museum,
Fifth Avenue, all of Manhattan
declared closed
for the duration; New York roped off,
the Empire State Building un-built,
stone by stone, steel girders
dismantled, the Brooklyn Bridge
melted down and Brooklyn cut loose
to drift out to sea.
By and by the prairie schooners
will return from the West (California
now only a word
whispered in feverish dreams
and no more), and from a non-place
not called Washington,
in a porticoed, pillared white house
that never was, a last tweet proclaims
the fading usurper’s futile fury –
then silence. Peace.
whypoetry 