Rumsfeld Refracted through Milton, Melville and Eliot

Of whom Melville might say, “… he only drinks the tepid tears of orphans.”

Or, “… he… lives like a Czar in an ice palace made of frozen sighs.”

Of whom Milton might say, “The seat of desolation, voyd of light.”

The blood mercenary of the oak table and the flat, dead nickel eyes.

Of whom Eliot might say, 
“A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water.”

The figure who approaches on the backcountry road at the wrong time of night who tells you,

“And I will show you something different from either

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”

He is the half-man who says that there are unknown knowns. The thought bursts into a thousand fine particles of light - this he can pursue, as Ahab would, across “wild and distant seas … through the undeliverable nameless perils.”