Surrender - By Mara Lemanis

 

 

Surrender

Will you surrender then
will you come meekly
to my castle keep?
I’ll draw a moat
around your scalloped shell
I’ll girdle you with ringing cliffs
strong mastiffs
baring tusks, long trunks
You’ll be a jewel in my keep;
why ask
will you feel sovereign and free?
what’s freedom but deliverance
from coffins creaking in the brain;

The question is
will you feel comforted and safe?
Yes.
Like a swallow in an eagle’s nest
Yes.
Like a sunny glade down
bright-eyed mountain crests.
What have you got to lose —
your indigent soft pride?
Your wheat fields dry to straw
You trade in deficits
Investors snub your stores
your bankers all in green hunt
futures in the ash of smoldered woods.

Your infantry runs off
to khaki wastes in no-man’s land
You say you’re going to fight —
where will you get the might?
I’ve digitized your realty
encrypted by my keep…
What pleasures will be yours:
I stud your bogs with virile trees
I tweak your hills to trill my hymns
come meekly now
don’t cry you’re in a bind
As everything that’s yours
is eminently mine.

                                                                                                                                Mara Lemanis

 

 

 

 

 

Biography: Mara Lemanis is a literary scholar. Her essays have been selected for 20th CENTURY LITERARY CRITICISM and are included in undergraduate student textbooks in the U.S.

She has worked as an archivist for Historical Preservation and with the IRC, assisting refugees in Oakland, California.