No weekends for the gods now. Wars
flicker, earth licks its open sores,
fresh breakage, fresh promotions, chance
assassinations, no advance.
Only man thinning out his own kind
sounds through the Sabbath noon, the blind
swipe of the pruner and his knife
busy about the tree of life…Pity the planet, all joy gone
from this sweet volcanic cone;
peace to our children when they fall
in small war on the heels of small
war—until the end of time
to police the earth, a ghost
orbiting forever lost
in our monotonous sublime.— Robert Lowell
*This is not to be read as signaling a position on some side of that ever-insistent partisan line, nor does it allude to an Opinion; I’m just sitting in a boat, looking and listening for descriptions of the waves. And I suppose it’s not a coincidence that Hölderlin’s boat in that link was already connected to Iran, and to a 15-minute-video everyone should watch.