Mar. 27 03 draft nota bene

Christine Amanpour

Real-time mastery of battle-space
segues to glittery, bejeweled beauty
of green auras around the dimmest lights
exploded views of incendiary devices
concealed in cane-brake, depth charges
that bring the river-trout to surface

a fountain without exactitude
of spigots trained on one illuminated point.
Reporters aren’t poets armed with Guggenheims
to write about Italian fountains
or art that tames the wild

rocking on flat-bottomed boats,
their gear intact among the bulrushes,
the satellite dishes
pinging their missives to the anchorman
in invisible binary bits and bleeps,
a dish that trains all scattered impulses
into glowing ash-heaps or emerald brilliance

An ice queen with a faintly Persian resonance
to her surname, but still assimilated
to Occidental values, opposes Ostrogoths
below the tan-line, their Hammurabic practices–
From whence comes her faint smirk
other than from scorn for those satrapies
who blew their rams'-horns or sacrificed their sons.