Is ushered in as nations hemorrhage
At every severed artery where bands
Of rag-tag soldiers issue their demands
At gunpoint. See, a new imperium
Broadcast by headline and by letter bomb
Replaces our old government of men . .
Until, by fiat, light's declared again
At midnight, and an iron rule replaces
The old chaos with universal stasis.
o
brave new world!
more catholic than Rome–
The sky spreads like a cupola or dome
Over the earth - wide, wider - till the last
Protestant voice is silenced in the vast
Inhuman northern cold, across whose snows
The far-flung stars are archipelagoes.
Laszlo Baranszky
MY MIRROR IMAGE
This patched-up window is
my unsteady mirror;
I haven't seen myself
whole for a month now .
It's nothing but a punch hole,
mosaic of glass and newspapers
like: "our second army . .. ."
and "they shall be disembowelled
on the spot" and, of course,
card boards and running brown tape.
Something is always missing:
my left eye, now it's the right half of my upper lip,
this small triangle on my forehead,
my left temple.
I have two pennysized patches below
my right eye.
