For Clark

In the morning in D.C.,

When I read a great metropolitan newspaper,

Over fresh coffee, two sugars, no cream,

it all seems so clear;

What is right

and what is wrong with the world

Is all laid out in tidy little type

Neatly divided into even lines

With nothing in between them,

Cleanly columnated to fit

Between previously prescribed margins,

With no awkward gaps,

Intriguing lacunae,

Or blanks to fill in,

And my need for order and simplicity.

Is satisfied.

But by day’s end,

When, over some slow and subtle vintage,

I ponder this week’s comics,

Its brighly garbed denizens struggle

With one another

With themselves

With the truths that lie between them,

In their four-color world

Of anger, grief, terror, and joy,

In an all-caps context

Pointed with exclamations,

Sixty plus years

Seems scant time indeed

To even begin to fathom

The Joker’s latest schemes

Let alone

What it all might mean,

And the motives of those who wish to rule the world

Or those who wish to stop them.