SADDAM IS DEAD TODAY, FORD DIED A FEW DAYS AGO

You probably shouldn’t be reading this today,
probably better to wait
about fifty years or so. Then with a little distance
between us and current events,
history will be able to remember these people.
Governments will rise and fall
with the dusk. It’s hard to know what will go on
in the night before the dawn.

It wouldn’t be fair
to write about you today,
because it will change tomorrow,
or in a year, or a decade, or a century.
The mental picture
will not tell the whole story.

It is amazing to look out on that field of snow
that has never been touched. We spend
so much time imagining a thousand footprints
there, like a thousand voices
telling us how much we have strayed.
And there we are left standing.

(30 December 2006)