THRENODY BY THE PRESIDENT FOR THE VICTIMS OF COVID-19

BEGINNING WITH A LINE BY CZESLAW MILOSZ

by Ralph Culver

1

 

You whom I could not save,

can we make our peace? 

There were so many of you.

And one body

after all

is very like another. 

One life is like another,

in spite of  

what you want to believe.

The dead in any language

are still the dead.

It’s clear that I was confused,

lost in the cool, deep grave of my skull

as the heat of the day 

made corpses in the street

sit up and roll away from the sun.

Addled and jaded, peremptory, 

determined to dissociate 

your fate from my own—

that was my first test

and my first failing.

 

2

 

You whom I did not save,

can you forgive me? 

Of course, if it were up to you,

I have convinced myself

you would have made

the same choice.

It occurs to me,

not for the first time,

that our days here 

are spent entangled in fables,

making our excuses, one

after another—

that I have become 

so proficient,

so adept, 

at evading the truth

that I would pronounce myself blameless

for every death,

including my own.

 

3

 

You who would not be saved,

that army of one who bears my name,

I give you thanks

for ignoring the pleas of the others

and accepting

your own damnation

in exchange for what now passes for my life.

Ralph Culver is a past contributor to TheNewVerse.News. His most recent collection of poems is the chapbook So Be It (WolfGang Press, 2018). His new collection A Passible Man is forthcoming from MadHat Press. He lives in South Burlington, Vermont.

CIRCE'S BLESSING

by Ralph Culver

#Werepig Doodle by Ariane Hofmaniyar.

—for Marie Yovanovitch and Fiona Hill

Cruelty, greed, indifference to others—
these were men, abject one minute
in their pursuit of power, and
obsequious the next
in their fawning adoration
for those who achieved it, often at
their own expense, and worse if
their lives had been spared in the quest.
These were men; this is what men do.
And when she turned to them

and changed them, into swine, jackals,
any form that crept or flew
or crawled but could not speak
with a man’s corrupted tongue,
they had settled into the new shapes
she had given them and,
more often than not, they were thankful.
In fact, for the most part, they
did not want to go back to being men.
It was safe to say they had seen enough.

Here’s the deal: it’s not an intervention
if it’s what you’ve been begging for.
Like most women, whether the woman
knows it or not, whether or not
she wants to know, she understood them
better than they understood themselves.
She was doing them a favor. Such relief
to be the condor, the vulture, that covets
carrion and seeks it out, but calling
to his own, and sharing the spoils.

Ralph Culver's most recent collection of poems is So Be It (WolfGang Press, 2018). His work has appeared in many journals and anthologies. He is a past grantee in poetry of the Vermont Arts Council and multiple nominee for the Pushcart Prize. His book A Passible Man is forthcoming from MadHat Press in 2020.