back to
poetry
index

Four Score
by Earl Coleman

Querulous no more, those plaintive questions
Long since brusquely brushed aside
By figure heads, inheritors
With neology crafted in an ink that disappears;

Bundled wintry afternoons, he bows
Before his books, now totting up the insults
To his ego, health, his paltry properties, his sex,
Restrained to diet chicken soup and bran.

He lays a plan to make a painless end,
Unwilling to participate in their pogrom
In which he is their sport, their flanken stew,
Their spoils of war, their Lotto pot,

And learns that even death comes dear --
Reluctant to disgorge his succulent ingredients
They've thrust a tablet up his rear as holy membrance
That his soul is theirs no less than sweetbreads, eyes and ears.