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The Secretary of Defense Meets
a Dark God in a Purple Dress
- "Never shall I forget the Christmas dances at Taos,
twilight, snow, the darkness coming over
the great wintry mountains and the lonely pueblo."--D.H. Lawrence
On Christmas Eve 2001 people poured into the Pueblo,
Packed the plaza,
and surrounded a dozen towers of split-rail firewood
as slanting light over the church turned to dusk.
Pueblo men lit the tops of the towers,
A little early, we thought, and then heard that Donald Rumsfeld,
whose land bordered the Pueblo,
requested an early start to ensure his security
as he was attending with entourage
The fires worked their way down the wood as dark deepened:
Welcome warmth in the chill mountain night.
Purple and orange tornadoes of flame and sparks engulfed some
towers,
The fiery wind whipping and writhing
fearful heat driving us back, smoke roiling, stinging our eyes,
the tapering cross-hatched bonfires like Kuwait oil derricks on fire.
Sharp deer rifle shots announced the procession.
Men wrapped in blankets emanated from San Geronimo chapel,
near the ruins of the 1619 chapel
destroyed by the U.S. Army in 1847.
The Secretary of War at that time was William Learned Marcy.
The blanketed men make solemn circuit through the multitudes, the
sparks, the smoke
Led by two clowns, a "Mexican couple,"
the man in a sloppy serape and big sombrero;
Another man in curly wig, purple print dress, red high-top tennies,
flaunting huge breasts of balloons or gourds
Suddenly "she" spied her dream lover in the crowd:
a man worth between $70 and $210 million dollars
a true sugar daddy, Donald Rumsfeld,
and rushed to him,
crying and cooing in broken Spanish,
as the crowd laughed.
The "Mexicana" vented her lurid lust on the Secretary of Defense.
Her hands circled his neck,
she hiked her skirt,
bumped and ground with one knee high,
rubbed her bosoms across his chest,
finally pulled away by her jealous "Mexican boyfriend."
D.H. Lawrence stood here and witnessed this ceremony 77 years ago
He wrote that Clifford Chatterley's clacking wheelchair symbolized
the evils of technology in the antique war to end all wars
Now, ten thousand maimed in Operation Iraqi Freedom
Some run Iron Man races on titanium feet and Teflon knees
Some with faces blown apart by improvised explosives, left like
Dalton TrumboŐs Johnny, facing life with facial parts missing in
action
The clown couple moved on through the smoke.
Rumsfeld beamed, reveled in the role, straightened his khaki coat,
comfortable at the center of attention
Perhaps he will never know the legacy of the dark gods of Red
Willow Place;
it was the only personal sliming he received in the years of war over
which he suavely presided,
There in the acrid smoke of burning towers
With RembrandtŐs golden light etching the faces of soldiers present
and past
Steve Fox lives in Taos, NM., where he writes a syndicated newspaper column, "Between the Lines," and teaches writing. He has led several institutes into Mexico and the borderlands. He is the author of "Toxic Work," a nonfiction book, and is working on a memoir of the times of The Colonels in Greece.
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