VII. The Great Eye

Manic, impatient, nervous, fearful,
The Great Eye no longer stares.
It’s gaze that used to cast light into deep corners,
Now flitted with dizzying speed from one bright bauble to another.

But for that one moment, it had blinked unbelieving,
At the sight of a blanket pulled back,
Of a weakened body shivering and naked,
It had looked within itself and found a ghost.

The Mentor offered blame and smoke,
Marionettes were put back in their boxes,
Explanations were confused with lies and threats,
Soon, no one remembered that the Great Eye had ever blinked.
A hole was opened in the collective memory,
And the dead flowed into it.

---

Notes:

"The Mentor offered blame and smoke"
“The Mentor” aka Karl Rove - A purely political adviser, who controls the president’s media message, was made the New Orleans reconstruction czar:
"Republicans said Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff and Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, was in charge of the reconstruction effort." (New York Times, 9/15/05).

"A hole was opened in the collective memory..."
The Bush Administration’s attitude towards the public’s perception of them is best summed up by this quotation in an October 17, 2004, New York Times Magazine article by writer Ron Suskind. The quote is from an unnamed aide to George W. Bush:

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."