The Characters Of The Heroes Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Aggrandizing- vermilion,
And now the swans come, singing over
The trailer parks where you
Live in your brown skin- and your man,
Hung like a delicate wreck
Underneath the graveyards where all of
Our grandmothers live:
And the fabulous stars. See how they are dancing-
Volumes of them:
And your aunts in those hills, bosoms diademed
With the spikes of flinted arrow-heads:
See their monuments in the red diamonds
Of national monuments and
Baseball fields- see how you will forget me,
As the ants congregate in the churches
Of grass:
And, maybe- sometimes, you will come out
Barefooted in your little world,
Carrying around your beautiful rivers, the gold
I have given you-
And looking up, curse the gods and their
Propositions for the characters of the heroes they have
Given you.