Because everything is broken in this
country of squandered and pillaged
dreams, even the sonnet’s usual bliss can’t
right it all in fourteen jagged
lines. When all remains said and undone,
this sonnet will list like the Andrea
Doria, mortally wounded off the stone
coast of New England, her swaying
lifeboats unhinged from their davits, the
democracy too far and few between
governments, banks, and poets to save
everyone from the preened
power’s drowning. So this sonnet ends