I know something you don’t know.  The Alianza
Para Progresso will come to nothing, Kissinger
will kill it on September 11, 1973.  The moon launch
will be Johnson’s, out of Houston.  In the kitchen

of the Ambassador Hotel, Bobby will get it
point-blank just behind his ear, and twelve years on,
Ted will flub the question, why he’s running.
The test ban won’t last; Nixon wins twice;

the Soviets march on Prague and we play golf;
and come the millennium, two million citizens
in prison will get high on glue from the machine
shop.  Ask not what the tolling bell can do for you,

ask what it matters in eternity.  Consider the dying stars,
how they bring unfinished business to a perfect end.