IMPROVISATION # 26

SIAH ARMAJINI'S TOMBS

Visited your mortuary
this December
in the snow
viewing poets of our era
remembering
your awesome sculpture
of poets as we view
Rimbaud and O'Hara
Berryman, Whitman
and Thoreau
not only in stone
but also of the philosopher
and Christian martyr
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
as we go back far
of those armed by culture
unwillingly scarred by war
or exiled by State
by unsavory politicians
still to be known
in history
whom fate rarely smiled
yet in memory
or glory of a few
who still smile on
Alexander the Great
or Oscar Wilde.