Sunday, March 28, 2010

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Health Care Bill

With apologies to Wallace Stevens.
I.
Among fifty failing states,
The only moving thing
Was the cost of the health care bill.
II.
The CBO was of three minds,
Like a hopper
In which there are three health care bills.
III.
A health care bill swirled in the cloakrooms.
It was but a small part of the Big Lie.
IV.
A Reid and a Pelosi
Are one.
A Reid and a Pelosi and a health care bill
Are one.
V.
I do not know which to prefer,
The folly of the deceptions
Or the folly of the desperations,
The health care bill passing
Or just after.
VI.
Snowmounds filled the Capitol steps
With muddy puddles.
The shadow of the health care bill
Passed them, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An unfathomable doom.
VII.
Oh wise men of Congress,
Why do you dream of wonder cures?
Do you not see that the health care bill
Stoops beneath the feet
Of the system around you?
VIII.
I know high premiums
And frightful, inescapable long lines;
But I know, too,
That the health care bill is involved
In what I know.
IX.
When the health care bill moved out of sight,
It marked the start
Of one of many scandals.
X.
At the sound of health care bills
Read into the deep night,
Even the frauds of K Street
Would cry out sharply.
XI.
He flew over Connecticut
In a white bird.
Once a fear pierced him
In that he mistook
The shadow of his presidency
For health care bills.
XII.
Obama is speaking.
The health care bill must be losing.
XIII.
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The health care bill sat
In the Speaker's chair.

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