In Brussels my brother
plies his trade as a ventriloquist.
His deepest voice
thrown an oceanic distance
only a multinational could manage
is Big Pharma
booming, fatherly
generous in a technical way,
wartime leader against TB
The business bistro voice
is a sportsman's
capable of levitating a Guiness
while reciting football stats,
steering dialog
with an unnoticed tug on the reins
smile-speaking through pauses
Saguaro in stature
with no trace of sadness
he gazed the billowy Atlantic
from the air far above submerged ruins
of die glückliche Zeit,
merchantmen, midshipmen
& slain Wolfpacks whose prey they had been --
to each the North Atlantic had been
There are no hospitals.
Drugs could flow in rivers around them
It's wealth chatting with wealth from a distance.
May as well read poems to the dead.
Injustice has a compact snarl
an economic calculation,
the measured tradeoffs
of a virtuoso voice-thrower
taunting the doomed with perfect intonation
America's fading wealth against the world's poor
the other Battle of the Atlantic
August 2011 for Ross