Stanzas Beginning with Some Lines of Rumsfeld



People study things all the time that don't lead to things



and it is not pursuing

us down the back-

alley procedure—an

elevated

state of why



and it is not developing

horns, tumors, or other

old-growth failings

in the results drawn

from a scoured trailer



it is not building

white cities in the

civilized silt, ran-

sacked and hard

against blistered skin



it is not manufacturing

the closed-up case

of sugar water, its

fizzy lust

for the tongue



and it’s not deploying

freedom across a

flooding plain, one

stop-dike finger,

one scrabbling hand



and it is not using

what it knows of us

for pleasure—only

caring what

can be made of it