The Fly Talks Back

Provoked by political scandal, Emily takes another look.

I buzzed a lot before I died
And joined the stillness of this room,
Before the presidential pique brought down
The cultured hand of doom.

He fixed me with his gimlet eye -
Calculating, cold, was he -
No Buddha in transcendant trance who
Took no note of me.

He's bound (he claims) by higher things,
Like fixing health care 'ere we die,
By duty at a camel strains but
Must needs swat the fly.

"All victory to the King!" they cry
As one (a monolithic group),
"His stroke was pure, the outcome sure,
No maggots in the soup!"

But every creature finds its niche - I've heard -
And mine is surely here,
Sucking presidential sweat
From off the royal ear.

Power corrupts, we must conclude - for
When it came to me -
My crucial place in God's good plan
He could not see to see.

He who loves diversity lets
All creatures in the door,
But looked down so indifferently
At me on the floor,

Where, before the windows failed,
He saw but one of me -
My many-chambered eyes saw death -
In multiplicity.