Of all the insurrections that the day
attempts to marshal into something like
a commonwealth, which of them—the quick
euphorias, the brave rushes giving way

so cravenly again to lassitude,
and that, in turn, to dread or fretfulness
(routed later by resurgent bliss)—
is final sovereign of the fractious moods?

Change, you are the savage general and the peace
most missed in times of stalemate; from each
debacle there’s a transient release,

a treaty hammered out between the sides
which, no sooner signed, is promptly breached,
leaving them lame, unled, and balkanized.