Outside My Window Xx Poem by Frank Avon

A few last leaves
rain-sprinkled
on the tulip tree

immersed in gray,

and I am reading Blake again,
his tribute to the Angel of Amerika,
her virgin prairies far distant
from the Prince of Albion,
the escape of the hairy Orc
from his chains of constraint,
his uprising against the ancient Urizen,
who is himself enchained by law and order,
the tyranny of arid rationalism,

and I am reading on this dark day
and remembering when I was Orc,
baking in the sun, nude to its rays,
trusting that Amerika would rise again,

and I am sitting here in these shadows
with the light of a pale lamp
over my right shoulder,
clicking on this keyboard,
my vision captured by those pale yellow leaves
the last on the tree
and the blackened foliage, wilted on the bare stems
of this past summer's giant hibiscus,

crimson but tentative,

and I am distressed
by last night's dreams
and today's news
and the vision of Amerika
rejecting refugees,
its oligarchs more despotic even
than that Prince of Albion,
and no Orc in sight

and autumn adumbrated

and where I sit they have
'shut the five gates
of their law-built heaven /
Filled with blasting fancies
and with mildews of despair /
With fierce disease and lust
unable to stem the fires of Orc'
in Beirut and Paris and Mali,
on Russian aircraft over Egypt,
suicide bombs strapped to their chests
in attics and seedy apartments and closets
springing forth naked and bearded
to fulfil the prophecies of ancient Amos
and Jeremiah and the Blake of Amerika.

and, as I sit here, darkness gathers
as night falls
in the middle of the afternoon,
and what was green and red blackens
and all I see in my window panes
are shadows of what lights shine within,
of my desk and chair and bedside
and the screen of this silent computer
and my copy of Blake's Poetry and Designs

and what I read

pale leaves -
the pages of
this tome

which once would have been
His scroll