David Lehman
Poem in Three Parts
1.
Some dictators who favor military garb
deserve to be hanged I guess but brag
about it I wouldn't as one who opposes
capital punishment and supposes
it's possible to hold contradictory ideas
in the mind and function, etc., aides
permitting. I am dictating into a phone.
Does that me a dictator? Nope. No hope
for the mighty, no rest for the wicked.
Sooner or later everyone feels dicked.
2.
"You got me crying again," Lee Wiley
sings. She asked me to reconcile
the opposing statements I made and
I did what I usualy do I shrugged
and shy asked "Do I have to?" It's
like defining "the Soviet experiment"
in fifty words or less it can be done but
I'd rather meditate on a number
the number seven for example
seven days in a week and on
the seventh day he rested
in the seventh heaven.
3.
The dictator wrote
novels but the poet
didn't dictate foreign policy.
Is that, as Peggy Lee sang,
"all that there is"?
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