Each with his president’s telegram.

Each with his emblem, the grey bloody flag

he shows no one.

The medal the map the names

of his bullet-raked brothers, notes

of the book of delusions

he’ll write now the war’s done

and the empire diminished. We

never gave it much thought

is said of atrocity, cameras

noting his face, the mouth

that says it’s a mouth in a face

that says it knows better now.

Now he’s like everyone,

some days alone, sometimes anywhere,

with his woman who reads for him

books from the vanishing country.