I originally posted “To Statecraft Embalmed” by Marianne Moore on December 22.
I’m posting it again.
Many necromancers were revealed yesterday. They commune with and conjure death, plague, hatred, racism, avarice, craven self-interest, every kind of bigotry. They worship power and lust after despots.
They trade fear for violence in satchels marked “ashes” and “beauty.”
An early work, and I love it. “To Statecraft Embalmed” starts with an image that might just as easily refer to a certain (current) political figure:
The only version of the full text I can find online isn’t formatted exactly how piece is presented in her Collected Works, a volume I seem to have misplaced precisely as I sat down to write this post.
The whole thing reads to me as uncanny prophesy, hard plumage and all.
Chris Cocca 