lines june 8

what is the reality of a poem?why
the long face,blue donkey,why
the balloons?we floated above the onion
dome & shouted to mayakovsky,to marx,
to danton on the other side of history.heads
rolled for the right to grieve.heads rolled
in the right direction,downward
on the map,tho you know,poem,& i,
the map is not the
it's not the

still,it caught the blood of royals,turned
to ink by divisions of diddlers penning
apologies for aristocracies washed
away,the tonnage ot text devoted
to the few thousand dead of the terrors,
scarcely a word for the millions
who came before,robbed & raped,
maltreated,murdered,mulched
beneath the ermine cloak of probity,
what is the reality of a poem