"An apocalypse is the opposite of a dream. A dream is falser than the outer life. But the end of the world is more actual than the world it ends." —GK Chesterton
"Patronage
O for the days of assassin-dispatching, cousin-poisoning
Renaissance dukes with an ear for beauty in ottava rima,
Of big-spending cutthroat Borgias in papal regalia
Willing to lavish blood-slick ducats on the fine arts,
Kings with rotten teeth who hanged pickpockets from bridges
But paid their pet playwrights a living wage, sherbet-sipping
Sultans who shuttle between the harem and the mehfil,
O for my very own surveillance-state Caesar Augustus
Asking only that every so often a stanza liken him to Jove,
O for a dissolute aesthetic Pasha, or a Medici who gets me,
Or some Rilkean widow offering a rent-free seaside castle,
Anything but this committee of rivals and fossils,
Unpublishable judges with grudges in a coffee conclave
Glancing at my heart like a passport handed over
At heaven’s border, snug mediocrities with slovenly offices
Deciding whether I am fit to have a future here, the light
From my unwritten books still light years in the distance
Reaching me for now, though there’s no way to tell
If they’ve blinked out already, making way for the tenured night."
—Amit Majmudar via
Now that we know the backstory.
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