Hot News, Stale News by Stanley Moss



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Buy Asleep in the Garden at Amazon.com
Buy
Asleep in the Garden
at Amazon.com
Thucydides tells us in an election year
Pisistratus, the Athenian tyrant,
wanting the protection of a god,
got the biggest beautiful woman he could find,
dressed her in silver and gold armor,
proclaimed her the goddess Athena
and drove through the streets of Athens
with the goddess at his side.
These days, every candidate
wants to be photgraphed
going to or coming from Jesus.
One declared "Jesus is in my heart,"
but when he refused to stay
the executions for a hundred or so,
his Jesus was silent.

Our presidential candidates,
like Roman emperors,
favor the death penalty,
but in two thousand years there is a difference.
No candidate would do it for fun, or think death
a competent sentence for cutting down trees
or killing deer, as in18th century England.
It' not all blood and circus:
When Camus asked de Gaulle,
What can a writer do for France?
The President replied: Write well!
Have you heard what's new on the Rialto:
since Pope John Paul declared anti-Semitism a sin,
hell has been so crowded,
you can't find a decent room there at a hotel.

 

 

STANLEY MOSS'S most recent book, Asleep in the Garden, New and Selected Poems, was published by the Seven Stories Press.  A new book, The Last Judgment, will be published in February 2002.

"Hot News, Stale News" first appeared in the American Poetry Review (May/June 2001)

 

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