The Citizen of Heaven
He is the one who walks upon it.
Hallowed...from the sacrifice that passed it on.
Home...from infant life that still reposes
in the body. There, it will entreat
with that fair eloquence the body politic
employs--all torn from old nobility
that blood bears in its stream, enriched
from fragments that the heart
has stored away--the jagged memories,
the tears of those we loved,
the bells that sang from towers
still remembered as the years sink down.
It resurrects the dead, this fatherland
that cries for loyalty; its cunning
tries the patient, trips up the ingenue
who sees what is supposed to be
and not what is. It fosters bravery
and blindness, soars upon the winds
of rhetoric, and casts its stones
with khaki kindness at a world
that interferes.
God bless the citizen who follows
on the highway where the marchers
said goodbye, took up their arms,
and faded in the far-off sky. God bless
his vision of returning...bless the faith
he musters for the heroes nigh
at that far turn ahead,
still washed in that pale emptiness
disclosed across the evening sun.
He is the watcher, still,
who hears the bells, and hums along
expectantly...
He is the blessed one.
~
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