An emperor
           distrusts scholarship,
                      and agape with
                                 a Bergsonian hive
                                             he learns to trust what has been given to him by elderly:
here is a box of nouns, here is a box of verbs, here is a box of pronouns.
Will you take them
to an opera for tea?
            It was Wagner’s world,
                         you see, that most astonished what
                                     was left of a Chinese empire and
                                                   an intangible expanse of Japan elides with him in evenings
as he hunkers down in his bunker, once again underneath all….
You pull him close.
He slips out of him.
              A world falls away.
                         For a time, flowers
                                      prick at light.

— Laura Carter