So, which persona shall we dress today?
I just took in le Carre, so shall we play the Circus game?
Let us splay out our little squalid zone, mercator-like,
and move our friends and unfriends on a Risk display.
Let alone the fact that none of us are smart enough
for intelligence, disciplined enough
for the dark agenda we wish for and assay.
I know: we'll dally in Machiavelli, and resort to footnotes
of the Medici, the Borgia, the Renaissance ecclesiology that built
St. Peter's and gild our conversation with Cosimo's gold brocade.
But we are neither hard enough nor cultured
even to take the proper fork at service a la russe,
even to stay sang froid in a small-minded repartee.
Shall we try psychology or history or anything but theology?
It is fun and fine to cast our passion in so much academe
and mark the mob's insanity, and diagnose the fey.
The Bible is merely fundamental and theology so personal:
why should we mention Jesus or the Cross?
He will ruin everything, not a table left unturned.
Unsophisticated, bumpkinesque, that plain provincial meekness,
and every word a toll, so short and hard, sharp and stone, eternal.
The infinite is so droll.
He makes me feel so cross.
Let's not talk of God today:
we'll fix our mask and play the masque
and tongue our dreary weltanschauung,
you do not fit there after all,
except your value for the task.
We'll go our separate ways.
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