Gold Standard

He is the contact of contacts;
to colleagues, a paragon.
His phone calls instruct senators,
his memos empty countrysides and cities.
He is wise, associates say, in the ways of the Force.
Born under the regime
of production, having helped to refine
speculation, he now flourishes
in what may be called consolidation.
Although he leaves his desk these days at four,
he still justifies each quarter-hour
in a little, legendary book.
If one wonders how, after dinner and
the stretches and aerobics
that will keep him immortal, he spends
the last block of his evening,
one might be shocked to learn he’s a poetry fan.
Not only the classics, Donne, Byron,
but new talent, young talent. He takes
in good part their political childishness,
the imprecations of minorities,
the posturing and self-consciousness
of varying genders and the avant-garde.
What he seeks, the sine qua non, the essence,
is a certain sensitivity, a sense
of the other or, as they say, the Other;
organs generously laved
in emotion; love, the beloved invoked
where it ought to be, at the end,
although of course pervading the whole structure.