_{Miserere nobis.}

Caliban clove the fetters

that hobbled the people of hate,

sprung Stars & Bars, and howls

of White Power!, Immigrants Out!,

brayed Lock her up! through the agora,

and dismembered the moral order.

The sun did not explode,

wind groomed the trees

and buried gutters under leaves,

lobsters scrabbled from littorals

to deeper, warmer offshore seas,

no instrument distinguished the day

sixty-three million Americans

blew illusions about them away.

In the gathering shadows

the outer dark takes stock

of tribal loathing, tribal fear

that gnaw heartland and its Kaiser,

cockroaches in the gene,

primeval, ugly, adamantine

that spy an enemy in every stranger,

twin vandals, that for a lark torch a hijab

while its wearer waves for a Yellow cab.

And in sum, we are afraid.