A Lament for Europe

A Lament for Europe

Land of the Setting Sun
Caldron simmering in hungering desperation
To regain the smacks of the Past.
You seek to lunge ahead
On the energy of Your logic
And hopes not yet lionized.
You call upon Your histories
To lend strength to Your phantasies.
You coil up hard on Your proud self
Wrinkled and weather-beaten.
You struggle to nurture new flowers
On the dry rot of Your haunted memories.
Your youth, sniffed upon by strapped canine squads,
Rape-hate in Your stadiums
Striped with electronic rejoinders
To press softly-pliant, gaily-tinged plastic buttons.
Your elderly curl their ways to bankrupt health ministries
Where physicians fool with forms
And fill in football pools.
Your neighbors to the East—
Brazen, sordid—
Yank towards You
Roughly extracting for exacting theirs craved for.
You, Europe, sit pickled—
Soused in the juices of Your scummy heretofore.
Your dabblers in politics set flags unfurled
And their powers shame—
Shame!—
This Our world.


Anthony St. John