When the Star-Spangled Banner crackled into fragments
of applause, and cannons thumped the sky with blanks,
the poison in the thermometer sank a little deeper,
but hell, if we would let that keep us from our children,
however lame our backs or vulnerable the offensive line;
the price we pay, knowing a sacrifice for the team spoke
volumes of our ritual need to pretend victory or loss
would matter much or long or express some higher purpose,
a power more sharply felt in the shock that sweeps us
into one hush, one speechlessness where anthems go,
on the heels of boys carried off unconscious or, God
willing, revived, waving to the strange ovation like a flag.
Bruce Bond
Bruce Bond is the author of thirty-four books including, most recently, Patmos (Juniper Prize, UMass, 2021), Behemoth (New Criterion Prize, 2021), Liberation of Dissonance (Schaffner Award for Literature in Music, Schaffner, 2022), and Invention of the Wilderness (LSU, 2023), plus two books of criticism Immanent Distance (U. of Michigan, 2015) and Plurality and the Poetics of Self (Palgrave, 2019). Among his forthcoming books are Therapon (inspired by Emmanuel Levinas and co-authored with Dan Beachy-Quick, Tupelo) and Vault (Richard Snyder Award, Ashland). Presently he teaches part-time as a Regents Emeritus Professor of English at the University of North Texas and performs jazz and classical guitar in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.
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