day EIGHT HUNDRED and FIFTY THREE

“The smiler: On Jared Kushner”

(Following Laurence Tribe’s tweet on 3.9.19,

and thinking of Chaucer’s “The Knight’s Tale”)

Here we see plain the dark imagining

Of felony, and all the lobbying;

No cruel ire, but cool and slimy greed;

The pickpocket; the smarmy smirking weed;

The smiler with the knife under the cloak;

The White House burning in the dirty smoke;

The treason, murder in the Consulate;

Benedict Arnold selling out the State;

Not head of government: a hidden part

Of this corruption: evil’s beating heart.

--Cheryl Caesar