We are a public forum committed to collective reasoning and the imagination of a more just world. Join today to help us keep the discussion of ideas free and open to everyone, and enjoy member benefits like our quarterly books.
Your hill is a fortress
of brambles and cliffs,
your vantage points time,
terrain, and clear air.
Enclosing the village,
a wall of flat rocks
would stumble invaders.
You must have watched
the last ones arrive:
glint off the helmets
and horse buckles, wheels
of chariots—light
jagged in history
nothing could stop.
They marched to the summit
or waited you out,
the final result
the same: slit throats,
shackles, and rape.
The red cloak of empire
smothered your tongue.
Your hearth fires, prayers,
lintel of skulls—
dust under columns
supporting new gods.
The hill didn’t hear
you suffocate.
Fires it had felt
often before.
Whips, medals, scrolls—
all history’s trappings
so much scrub.
When I climbed through brush
and stepped over the wall,
the light was stone dry.
Back to the south
hill followed hill
and behind them, the sea.
Don Bogen is author of, most recently, An Algebra. He teaches at the University of Cincinnati.
Contributions from readers enable us to provide a public space, free and open, for the discussion of ideas. Join this effort – become a supporting reader today.
Vital reading on politics, literature, and more in your inbox. Sign up for our Weekly Newsletter, Monthly Roundup, and event notifications.
Poetry
in your carpeted office you lay my life down / and say open up to that small room in my sternum.
In his new book, the former Fed chair cuts through economic orthodoxy on central banking. But he fails to reckon deeply with its political consequences.
A political and literary forum, independent and nonprofit since 1975. Registered 501(c)(3) organization. Learn more about our mission
