The Napoleonists

It is always a question of fathers:

The good papa, distant in his foreign realm,

The rotten dad here at home.

A mad god rules the centre.

The sons of despots become despots, too,

Rulers of their own rival courts.

They ride with Napoleon in the wilderness,

Banished from the corrupt citadel,

Rallying the righteous legions of the dead

Against the present, under the future’s flag.

Only revolt is pure and religious:

Mercurial escapists, spitting cobras

Of the mind, they relish their venom,

Yet believing their hatred benign,

All too ready to turn the dagger

Against themselves, in vicious despair.

Dandy’s nonchalance turns to violence,

Persuaded of its own moral right,

Against the loved detested patriarch.

The cold moon promises final defeat,

After grand performances of nursery games,

The exercise of narcissistic martyrdom

In “revolution” or “enlightened reform”.

And all these faces, theoretically loved,

Are but masks in a sinister charade.