My Life as a Ruler

I.

The world, when I met it,
lay about in broken pieces—
a neglected toy. A red hill
here; a river valley there,
green and languid; a bridge
rusting over an oil-slicked lake.
To the west and south, the tribes
had warred until their cities smoked
and their children faded, wraithed
by whooping cough.

All I did was pick up the pieces.
I caused them to be put together
like the parts of a chair.

II.

When I was young, I often
saw my parents
naked. What a delicate
business they were.
And what was I?
Neither the doctor nor the nurse.
I was the knife;
I caused the injury.

III.

When fall begins to glitter
in the green leaves,
I grow anxious.
The barbarians will
ride out. They love the goldenness
of death, how it grieves
the eye to see such richness
as the river ebbs
and the trees unfleur—

To Nineveh I write:
Bring me forty bushels of wheat,
and forty of rice,
each bushel weighing more than one donkey
can carry, within the fortnight—.
If you do not do this,
you will surely die
And then I wait.

IV.

When I came to the throne,
I gave children birds
in their throats. We took
knives and made cuts
where the voice should be,
each cord becoming a song.
Now in the schools we have
red-wing cardinals, bluebirds,
thrashers, yellow-speckled hens,
parakeets, even, now and then,
the nightingale.

V.

I grow hungry
to be a knife again.

VI.

My subject, you
think you have a choice, but
you don't: you are me,
and I love you as only
a ruler can love—
unmercifully.
Do not be sentimental
about mercy. It leaves
so much up to choice….

VII.

That year was a beautiful lie,
the year my love lived with me
and we spent the summer
wading into the Nile
as the floods receded
letting the current carry our bodies
around the bend—.

The water so strong
you had to dive in
before it knocked
you off your feet
and pulled you
under—
he showed me how to pick thistle
for tea. We came upon
a leopard in the grass
and she hissed at us.
One day he hissed at me,
slapping away my hands,
asking "What kind of person
does THAT?"

No one loves the person
who holds power
over his survival.

VIII.

I was sad, and I
stuffed your throats
with birds.

IX.

I cut the sea
with a knife
because the sea
would not stop for me.
And still it broke:
not under me,
but over me.

X.

Of course I hate my power.
Bored, I ply lithe men with faience,
require the dancing girls to moan and plaint.
I lick kohl from their salty eyelids.
I take the gold from the braziers and burn strangers' flesh.
None of it satisfies me.
I thought the world's trouble
lay in its shards. So I resolved to hold
the shards to my heart.
Now I find the trouble is the night,
which keeps coming, though
I command it not to.

XI.

Tonight I wash my hands and sing
old songs. I call my friend,
I love to watch him dance….
He drinks wine impetuously.
He will leave my care
when another's light kiss
vaccinates him against my illness—
some sweet-tempered almondine thing
lighting firecrackers between her feet
in the summer grass—not one
like me, nearly frozen up with cruelty—

XII.

And so I go to work.
My nation is the grass,
these broken bridges,
men and women burning
beside the crumbling churches.
I keep them alive with my words.
I am vigilant.
I am the grass and the birds
and I eat them too.





"My Life as a Ruler" originally appeared in The Kenyon Review. Reprinted with the permission of the author. All rights reserved.