Last night’s bright smoke

clings to hair and clothes.

Today breaks acrid,

rank with ripe decay;

burnt-out sulfur-shells,

damp in morning dew, flaccid,

toppled tubes of ash and paper

litter the lane, the battlefield fallen

line the gutter, burnt-out husks of war—

their odor mingles with fresh sea-fog

corrupting its iodine tang with smog.

 

On such a day as this

Adams and Jefferson were washed

and ready for embalming.

Our second and third presidents

died on Independence Day;

Adams’s son elected number six,

Tom and Sally’s children freed

on paper only.

 

The namesake of their death-month

was murdered by friends and colleagues

on the Ides of March—the last time

such a grand experiment in trust

as ours was killed—

that old one euthanized in full decline,

this youth may soon be throttled

in its prime.

 

And so, foreboding too is in the air

as I sweep charred paper bodies to the bin,

its odor thicker, nauseous,

edged with fear for those

who always do the suffering:

the children, their mothers and the peaceful.

 

Then, scooping up the last pan-full of ash

I see red script—the Chinese newspapers

from which the pyrotechnic tubes were made—

and I think of how Mao called us paper tigers,

and of parchment scrolls

hand inked by Master Tom,

of all our paper freedoms being lost,

and how, without struggle,

all are free

on paper only.