The Poet Confesses to the War Reporter

We love war, your mother and I adore
our Shakespearean meltdowns. She will assault
your father’s frail ego, and he’ll go all
Lear on himself. Feels good. Then rain the tears
upon the howling heath. But who doesn’t
need a good war? In Kabul, Aleppo.
Chicago, LA, DC—we envy
the dead! Why else would we send so many
thither? and just as zestily stir up
reinforcements. Who come crying hither,
quoth the poet. And go guttering from
the tall tallows of their lives. With curtains
wavering in windows, palm fronds dashing
themselves to the street like cranes committing
suicide. Shy Mercedeses. And crows
darting across the sky. The light is all
there is to notice the seasons curling
into or out of the dust. While the muse
uses me, just as you spend your mother’s
summer body. Here’s to hoping you come
hither bawling and wawling. Delivered
from the womb into the womb of the world,
from the world into words. Every father
should beg for forgiveness, first. If this life
be some mysterious school, or some other
New Age nonsense. I fear it is nothing
but blood pooling on the tiles like a shout
cooling in a thought above the corpse of
Cordelia in the food court of that mall
in Nairobi today. I’m blind. I pray
you do not cast the shadow of my grief
when first you breathe and cry upon this stage
of lies. I forgive your mother, and she
has forgiven me. I prithee. Mark me,
my child.