The Truth is Harder than Marble

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

When they were finished with the robber, he

Was shoved down in a hole they dug beside

The place they killed him.  No ceremony

Marked off the moment.  Then a busy tide

Of weeds spilled out.  Napoleon is held

In purple Shoksha quartzite up above

Green granite.  Precious shaped curved stones then meld

Around his ashes.  No one thinks to shove

Him.  Bonaparte was much, much more a thug

But he his honored, almost worshiped, dome

On high for him who found that power is drug

Like all those bloody Caesars of vile Rome.

  The robbers and the royalty all come

    To stillness, still the same, death’s final slum.

©  Phillip Whidden