Mali, Mai Lai, San Bernardino, Planned Parenthood, Paris,
Doctors Without Borders, Drone death, NRA, Shock and Awe,
Boko Haram, ISIS/Daesh…
……………………………….. —The News
After you died
I stopped reading history.
I took up Cormack McCarthy
for the rage and murder.
Now I return to Gibbon; secure
in his reasonable civilization,
he exercises detachment
as barbarians skewer Romans.
Then Huns gallop from the sunrise
wearing skulls.
by Donald Hall
from Without – Letter After a Year, excerpt
Mariner Books, 1999