Looking For Rulers Poem by gershon hepner

When courage by corruption has been quenched
and energies repressed but not destroyed,
we look for rulers who are not blood-drenched,
and are not diagnosed as paranoid,
and hope they’ll look aggressors in the eye,
responsibly responding to their terror;
to be elected, though, all have to lie,
comparatively not a major error.

Inspired by primary election fever in Ohio and Texas, where Hillary Clinton is trying to avoid elimination by Barack Obama, and the opening soliloquy by Salemenes in Byron’s drama “Sardanapolus” (which inspired Delacroix’s famous painting, “Semiramis”) :
Salemenes (solus) . HE hath wronged his queen, but still he is her lord;
He hath wronged my sister-still he. is my brother;
He hath wronged his people-still he is their sovereign.-
And I must be his friend as well as subject:
He must not perish thus. I will not see
The blood of Nimrod and Semiramis
Sink in the earth, and thirteen hundred years
Of Empire ending like a shepherd's tale;
He must be roused. In his effeminate heart
There is a careless courage which Corruption
Has not all quenched, and latent energies,
Repressed by circumstance, but not destroyed-
Steeped, but not drowned, in deep voluptuousness.
If born a peasant, he had been a man
To have reached an empire: to an empire born,
He will bequeath none; nothing but a name,
Which his sons will not prize in heritage
Yet-not all lost-even yet-he may redeem
His sloth and shame, by only being that
Which he should be, as easily as the thing
He should not be and is. Were it less toil
To sway his nations than consume his life?
To head an army than to rule a harem?
He sweats in palling pleasures, dulls his soul, [4]
And saps his goodly strength, in toils which yield not
Health like the chase, nor glory like the war-
He must be roused. Alas! there is no sound
[Sound of soft music heard from within.]
To rouse him short of thunder. Hark! the lute-
The lyre-the timbrel; the lascivious tinklings
Of lulling instruments, the softening voices
Of women, and of beings less than women,
Must chime in to the echo of his revel,
While the great King of all we know of earth
Lolls crowned with roses, and his diadem
Lies negligently by to be caught up
By the first manly hand which dares to snatch it.
Lo, where they come! already I perceive
The reeking odours of the perfumed trains,
And see the bright gems of the glittering girls, [5]
At once his Chorus and his Council, flash
Along the gallery, and amidst the damsels,
As femininely garbed, and scarce less female,
The grandson of Semiramis, the Man-Queen.-
He comes! Shall I await him? yes, and front him,
And tell him what all good men tell each other,
Speaking of him and his. They come, the slaves
Led by the monarch subject to his slaves.



2/28/08