Trace II

I wake on Monday morning to my worst nightmare

Dirty blond sinshine making me squint on my drive

Home-to-the-office as I call my days spent there

  

Deleting email, retuming calls and watching lîve

Feed of the latest from Iraq whose mouming dead -

Their drawn, bloodless faces and wide, watery eyes

 

Pleading to camera lens - fill my scabrous head.

I stare at Blacksburg's hills jutted against the  sky

Drawing my office blinds and beat those hills

   

To the draw, their slouch matches my stance

  Behind my desk, where I prepare to sit still,

Chained ail day to tenure's incremental advance,

  

 From the academic cradle to the academic grave,

I cut and paste coupons of my achievements and press Save.

  

 Fred D'Aguiar. "Elegies", I,1. In Continental Shelf. Carcanet, 2009.