The helicopter on TV lifting from the White House lawn
reminds me of spells recited to freeze the kidnapper or thug,
rehearsed in the day-dream space of school dismissal
or across the open lots piled with tumbled sage
and repeated like a chant inside the mind’s idea of itself,
words that brought the bully to his knees
or made the slowing Rambler or Studebaker,
—the driver rolling down his window—vanish.
What saved me was the curse that bound the object to its fate,
words that filled the urn or vial of dark wishes,
what once was etched on fragments of papyrus
lost for millennia but alive in calculations of revenge
or days of better fortune, and so:
I bind you, deceiver of the deceived.
I bind you by the tail of the snake, the mouth
of the crocodile, the horns of the ram, the poison
of the asp, the hair of the cat, and the penis of God
so that you may never destroy again those
you have invaded, nor call yourself liberator
you who have taken to binding others with the collar
and leash, while the dog, crazed but restrained,
yaps in the hooded face.