Country X

What is a country? What is a State?

What is a human? And who or what

Is a writer? Roy asked recently.

We’re going to hazard they’re the same

Kind of thing in their most bedrock sense.

A country is a kind of idea,

Ever mutable and evolving.

As is a State. As is a human.

As is a writer. You have to ask

Why you are asking. Usually,

You’re searching for the exemplary—

Just what should a Sate or country be?

Or the essential, the echt, the true

Idea of the human, the writer.

But also you ask since you don’t know,

Or since the knowing never fixes

Itself in position, well and good.

And that’s valuable to know. Ideas

Are never wholly stable, never

The same for long. They’re tempting targets

For anyone shoring up power.

A State can be what you say it is.

A country should hew to your vision.

You can tailor human to yourself,

And a writer can try all these things.

But you can never settle it all,

No one can, not even autocrats,

Not even revolutionaries.

New versions are sure to erode theirs,

Murderers will be murdered by heirs.