For a time,

the human state

has been nerve-racking,

templebellishly nerve raking

since Dylan's early Roman kings

through Genghis Khan, Hitler, Stalin,

Trump, Putin;

the biological state

with a minuscule topping of intellect

for show

The truth is a gray curtain of rain,

standing at attention

in back of the mind,

or tedious on the sidewalks of New York,

or, indeed,

in some extensive French 19th century novel,

allotted a series of translations

all the way into the Information Age,

wild boars grubbing through the shrubs,

people dying like flies

for random reasons,

and death certainly hovering over my hand,

as it reaches into the vicinity for a throat lozenge