Richard B. Cheney Walks At Midnight

I like to believe that Vachel Lindsay would not disapprove too heartily.

Puck

Richard B. Cheney Walks At Midnight
(In Washington, D.C.)

It is portentous, and a thing of state
That there at midnight, somewhere undisclosed,
A mumbling figure walks, and will not rest,
composing random notions into proof he’s right.

Or in the White House, in his shadowed way,
he lingers at the Presidential side
and mutters dire fantasies and plots
and afterwards is unaware he lied.

A weighty, stocky man! His suit an ancient dark,
But darker yet, his countenance. His dreams
Make him the shaming, shambling voice
Of spurious factoids and malignant schemes.

He cannot sleep, nor can he fix
His mind, the narrow corridor
Of light a mocking echo of
The narrow oath he swore and then forswore.

His head is bowed. He humbly thinks of kings
And how they must be led. Yea, he
Will always lead, he thinks, as long
As mighty Colorado flows to western sea.

The sins of all the critics burn his heart.
His enemies know naught but claim it all.
He carries on his bulky aging shoulders now
The bitterness, the outrage and the gall.

He cannot rest until a distant dawn
Releases him only to wander, vain,
In chambers Senatorial and halls
Where he transmutes his mordancies to pain.

It breaks his heart that no one now believes
His tersely uttered shafts, once dynamite.
He stumbles, incoherent, through the day
And stammers, lost, unreachable, each night.