Sapokanikan

The cause is Ozymandian

The map of Sapokanikan

Is sanded and bevelled

The land lone and levelled

By some unrecorded and powerful hand

Which plays along the monument

And drums upon a plastic bag

The brave-men-and-women-so-dear-to-God-

And-famous-to-all-of-the-ages rag

Sing: Do you love me?

Will you remember?

The snow falls above me

The renderer renders

The event is in the hand of God

Beneath a patch of grass, her

Bones the old Dutch master hid

While elsewhere Tobias

And the angel disguise

What the scholars surmise was a mother and kid

Interred with other daughters

In dirt in other potter's fields

Above them, parades

Mark the passing of days

Through parks where pale colonnades arch in marble and steel

Where all of the twenty-thousand attending your footfall

And the cause that they died for are lost in the idling bird calls

And the records they left are cryptic at best

Lost in obsolescence

The text will not yield, nor x-ray reveal

With any fluorescence

Where the hand of the master begins and ends

I fell, I tried to do well but I won't be

Will you tell the one that I loved to remember and hold me

I call and call for the doctor

But the snow swallows me whole with ol' Florry Walker

And the event lives only in print

He said

It's alright, and it's all over now

And boarded the plane

His belt unfastened

The boy was known to show unusual daring

And, called a boy

This alderman, confounding Tammany Hall

In whose employ King Tamanend himself preceded John’s fall

So we all raise a standard

To which the wise and honest soul may repair

To which a hunter

A hundred years from now, may look and despair

And see with wonder

The tributes we have left to rust in the park

Swearing that our hair stood on end

To see John Purroy Mitchel depart

For the Western Front

Where work might count

All exeunt! All go out!

Await the hunter, to decipher the stone

(And what lies under, now)

The city is gone

Look and despair

Look and despair