In a gray corner of upper northwest
The mute circular headstones stand
In the old cemetery of the dead of Fort Stevens
The decayed, rotted, fishbone ribcages
Nourishing bricked over soil
As the sentries, too faithful by decades
Still guard the road to the filled marsh
Where the glass temple dedicated to
Transcience, celebrity, ruin and madness
Stands, on the other side of Penn,
The great parade ground of the republic
From Pope’s mausoleum, where rests,
Orphaned in history, St. Gauden’s plaster
Nearby the pond stagnates
And overgrown tourists feed overgrown ­goldfish
Who eat, ****, fin and expire
Under the watchful eye of the bronze horseman,
Grant, rising upon his marble bubble