XIV. Strange

how they lurk, these bastions of public health: the tower
+++++++of the Temple,
the Templars turned out, the Bourbons interred,
+++++++attendant
on the block or some infernal exile; Latvia, Edinburgh,
+++++++again
the rise to power, the mob’s rising anger, the fall.

And La prison de La Force now little but a plaque, a wall
+++++++on the corner
of rue du Roi de Sicile and the rue Mahler,
+++++++where
the Princesse de Lamballe was gang-raped
+++++++and lynched
by a mob involūtum in their revolutionary fervor.

Strange too, this wall the length of the Boulevard
+++++++Arago,
a bulwark of surety, blank menace, un monument
+++++++ à la santé,
its pluriform wrongdoers, a wronged Apollinaire
+++++++or
the occasional evil, a quisling, a Papon.

Original appearance in The Oxonian Review.

Ahren Warner won an Eric Gregory Award in 2010, and an Arts Foundation Award in 2012. His first collection, Confer, was published by Bloodaxe in 2011; it was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection.