I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Reagan, The Great Communicator, The Gipper of Yore:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Turning and turning in the widening quagmire
The puppet cannot hear the puppeteer;
Lies fall apart; the press releases cannot hold;
Mere marketing is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and in Iraq and America
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Faith-Based Initiative! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Ronnie
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with Hollywood body and the head of a cowboy,
A gaze blank and pitiless as CNN,
Is moving its slow lips, while all about it
Reel replays of the indignant birds landing on carriers draped with "Mission Accomplished" signs.
The polls drop again; but now I know
That twenty years of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Washington DC to be born — again?