Country Between the Kingdoms

A few small steps past the ponderous place
The sand dunes and snow banks where old vagabonds tire and terminate
Where young heroes throw down their stupid swords
And empty seashells drift tunelessly homeward
Their circular pilgrimage done
Lies the country between the kingdoms
It is a vast expanse of rumination and regret, caught and captured
Within the volume of a mote
Here, rooms of dim concrete are slowly overtaken
By oily water leaking from forsaken corners
Centuries-long in the melancholic process
While a witless woman sits, clicking away at a typewriter, forever
Oblivious
Here, broken palaces of the East invite the starved into their courts
The velvet night sings to the lost men of boundless treasure, food, and wine
And right when the ancient fools put goblets to their lips
The mischievous desert swallows up the fortress
As if it never was
Here, a hopeless shifting gray canopies the European steppes
Radiation touches all attempts at good green life
With its cancerous trembling hand
Trains bereft of passenger speed along the mountain flanks
Before mutedly falling off their tracks, into the twisting mirror rivers
Here, a peaceful pastel cul-de-sac is greeted one weekday's twilight
By a brilliant hysterical fire, consuming every shingled roof
Every silver SUV, every blonde babysitter
Every tulip garden and every TV
And someone somewhere in the flame howls
With endless aching laughter
Here, Caesar and his lieutenants round up all the slaves
To put on a show with flutes and drums
All they know is to toil the fields and raise the wheat
So they stand awkward and empty-stomached, gazing at their naked feet
They're thrown into the pits, the ovens, and the pots
Baked into earthy dark cakes and boiled into viscous soups
A platinum-haired page stands on the rim of a large clay vat
Stirring the solution with an oar that pierces heaven
So as not see or smell his ungodly work
His face has been well erased
Here, a forgotten American astronaut drifts
Slowly in tranquility and deaf fidelity
From galaxy to furthest galaxy
His frozen blue face delights at each new orange star
Before being sucked in and spit out of a black hole
Which he has been many times before
And will many times more
This is where you are after your war and before your peace
With energy spent and ready for rest
In solemn limbo before you find your nest