…in the fractious area still call the lake
by different names, neither of which is Trump;
dead Tito’s dream that the mad remaining rump
statelets will reconcile will not take—
utopian dreams are those from which we wake
fastest; Marine One’s dull whump-whump
sounds on the South Lawn; some other schlump
waves once and flies away; the news was fake
but we, like Stendhal stepping out in Florence
stared every day in awe, and felt our hearts
exceed themselves; we sweated bullets and
felt faint, mistook enrapture for abhorrence
and vice versa; and woke to grasp in fits and starts
that every empire is an ampersand.