By Nick Laird, from Go Giants, to be published in September by W. W. Norton. Laird is the author, most recently, of the novel Glover’s Mistake.
My daughter’s two weeks old tonight
and my wife wants me to talk to her more
so I started to explain how the answer
I did the thing I thought was right
was enthymematic, and meant to obscure
another rather major conjecture viz.
I do the thing I think it right to do.
Her slow blinks mean that in democracies
the leader’s not allowed to operate
according solely to what he or she decrees
is just or necessary; and my brand new
constituent looked appropriately cross
when I began to sing ‘Amazing Grace’
to the tune ‘The Sash My Father Wore.’
