In those years, people will say, we lost trackof the meaning of we, of youwe found ourselvesreduced to Iand the whole thing becamesilly, ironic, terrible:we were trying to live a personal lifeand yes, that was the only lifewe could bear witness to But the great dark birds of history screamed and plungedinto our personal weatherThey were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drovealong the shore, through the rags of fogwhere we stood, saying I

My country wedged fast in historystuck in the ice

Poetry never stood a chance of standing outside history.

False history gets made all day, any day,