The late English poet [link|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Larkin|Philip Larkin] has been hovering around my consciousness lately—one of those cases where the name, once the awareness has been pricked, suddenly turns up all around—and I have brought home from Colorado (via the excellent Denver bookstore [link|http://www.tatteredcover.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp|The Tattered Cover]) a volume of his collected verses, among which this seems about to be timely:

Homage to a Government

Next year we are to bring the soldiers home
For lack of money, and it is all right.
Places they guarded, or kept orderly,
Must guard themselves, and keep themselves orderly.
We want the money for ourselves at home
Instead of working. And this is all right.

It's hard to say who wanted it to happen,
But now it's been decided nobody minds.
The places are a long way off, not here,
Which is all right, and from what we hear
The soldiers there only made trouble happen.
Next year we shall be easier in our minds.

Next year we shall be living in a country
That brought its soldiers home for lack of money.
The statues will be standing in the same
Tree-muffled squares, and look nearly the same.
Our children will not know it's a different country.
All we can hope to leave them now is money.

I yearn for the death (along British lines) of the American Empire. I'll piss cheerfully on its grave.

cordially,