Years of Poems and Spirits

Heard Ethan Cohen’s poem read on NPR:

De jure is de facto’s slave;
The most foolhardy beat the brave;
Brass routs restraint; low lies high’s grave;
When conscience leads you, it’s astray;
The drunken driver has the right of way.

In his interview,  Cohen also talked about his struggle with the fear of mortality. Very unnerving.  Sometimes when you feel low, the last thing you want to hear is others describing, in the most poetic and moving way, how else you can feel about it.

What also strikes me is the irony that, being one 0f the most able artists who explores violence for a living, the poem reveals how much fear Cohen has toward the physical. Maybe I am reading too much Ming history recently, the feeling resembles a self-conscious eunuch telling the story of a life serving a capricious tyrant.