International Human Nights: A Poem

Elizabeth is in Chile.
Live from a mountaintop.
She studies the stars.
Giant telescopes
mounted on mountainsides
worked
by night scientists
working with small computers.

She wrote me today and said
Orion IS upside down.

Later, in class, the European diplomat
guest lecturing,
saying words like “conwinced” and “blackleest,”
is talking about the 700 years of federalism
about the tragedy of landmines
and child soldiers, child trafficking,
the Maoists being demilitarized in Nepal,
and I find myself trying to imagine

two shoulder points
three studs on a girded belt
(Would they hang on the same rakish angle
left to right,
or upside down,
does it slip up his hip, right to left?)
two star-spangled boots,
like Dolly Parton,
kicking it up on a stratospheric stage

all hanging, upside down,
upside down.

Orion is—

“So ven you say you want to beeld a fentz between the Youess and Mehico, I say, as long as one tzide of the fentz has an eight dohllur a day wage and on the ahther tzide of the fentz has an eight dohllur per hour wage—you can beeld a fence one hundrred meetrs high, and peeple will alwayz find a way.”