About the hills, for instance
which just this morning agreed to start changing
again, modulating their colors with successive
stages of light from elegant black to flannel gray
to harvest gold—all the expensive hues you’ve
inquired after at your local dealer
but which have been so hard to come by
in these precincts for generations at a time
brought to you by Janns, the local revolutionary
and subduer of the land, agreed, that is, under considerable
duress and facing certain annihilation as an option

But still, the question has been asked and somebody
ought to answer . . . Are you or are you not the namesake
of the uprising? The slaughterer’s whelp
who has yet to confront the needy inner child
blood-guilt and all? Many innocent bystanders ago
this was all for the taking, that is, priceless & venerable
Nothing you see could possibly have been imagined
much less embraced as the natural telos
of the million or so possibilities that once roamed
these plains & hillsides in peace and harmony. Now look
at it, a prospect virtually canonized for transacting

Clearly you’re experiencing another artifact of the human
condition, not exactly new, but probably still under warranty
so that all the agonizing give & take of the profit motive
remains intact and available, just waiting to be exercised
as a cultural imperative if not an inalienable right
After all, Janns stole the land fair and square, and you
need no intention of setting it back on its old path
to perdition. Historically speaking, you’re to be
congratulated, like the conquerors, and then summarily
dismissed, for you may now know too well how it feels
to have wrought such havoc in so short a time