The Citizen of Heaven

The Citizen of Heaven

Patria...sacred to the one who walks upon it.
Hallowed...from the sacrifice that passed it on.
Home...from infant life that still reposes in the body.
There, it will entreat with that fair eloquence
the body politic employs--all torn from old nobility
that blood bears in its stream,
enriched from fragments that the heart
has stored away--the jagged memories,
the tears of those we loved,
the bells that sang from towers
still remembered as the years sink down.

It resurrects the dead, this fatherland
that cries for loyalty; its cunning tries the patient,
trips up the ingenue
who sees what is supposed to be and not what is.
It fosters bravery and blindness,
soars upon the winds of rhetoric,
and casts its stones with khaki kindness
at a world that interferes.

God bless the citizen
who follows on the highway where the marchers
said goodbye, took up their arms,
and faded in the far-off sky.
God bless his vision of returning...
bless the faith he musters for the heroes nigh
at that far turn ahead,
still washed in that pale emptiness
disclosed across the evening sun.

He is the watcher, still,
who hears the bells,
and hums along expectantly

...the blessed one.
~