For a time,
the human state
has been nerve-racking,
templebellishly nerve raking
since Dylan's early Roman kings
through Genghis Khan, Hitler, Stalin,
Trump, Putin;
the biological state
with a minuscule topping of intellect
for show

The truth is a gray curtain of rain,
standing at attention
in back of the mind,
or tedious on the sidewalks of New York,
or, indeed,
in some extensive French 19th century novel,
allotted a series of translations
all the way into the Information Age,
wild boars grubbing through the shrubs,
people dying like flies
for random reasons,
and death certainly hovering over my hand,
as it reaches into the vicinity for a throat lozenge