Countries, muscular

in their arrogant and terrible pride,

with regimes instead of governments,

impregnable, unrelenting,

exactly not what we had called for

when at first we considered strength,

the gun's mightiness,

the frailty of words.

Nor like the potency and force,

the mainstay of our attachment --

and a firm support it seemed --

as we clung,

one tremulous wretch to another,

tricked into thinking -- anything!

Then shamed in our cross recriminations

that we'd gone impossibly, irredeemably wrong.

Oh, lover, who does not know strength

when he sees it? If he runs afoul of it,

how fast does he run?

Fleeter than ever before

he leaps over

stones and fences and bushes,

a fearless man,

based on all the reports of the day.