Benjamin Andreu

 

Blues for P.

I never wanted to,
but thank God
and Caia-
phas
for
you

That you could
straddle the shambles of
eternity in
an ossuary of
ambivalence, or
spit your curses
into mighty Caesar's
coffer

Somewhere you could
huddle close, in
the still life squalor
of another
Sabbath,

A family tree
in autumn --
   Same old Campania
   under a
   shroud of roots and
   ragged bergamot rinds,
   Tatty little Vienne on
   the warbling pageant of
   the Rhone, spangling,
   mid-water, its own banks
   with dusk
-- sowing
the scanty brows
of Samaritan
widows with
the chaff of colonial
grief

And a bandit's life for-
how--?
-- how venial the
largesse of your
dialectic --
how it festered,
that mirage of mob
rule

Roundabout to be sure,
but Abraham's
wandering arts lay
siege to that hill again,
and the friends of history
resurrected you
in a labyrinth of
etymology

I never wanted to,
but damn Pom-
pey and Hyr-
canus
for
you