OPUS 40

…not Chopin’s Polonaise in A Major

that played on Radio Warsaw as

the Polish Cavalry fought the Panzers

nor the sculpture park in New York State

but a tree-lined business park for IBM

on the edge of Warwick, medieval stronghold

of Earl Richard Neville, the King Maker,

next to the town cemetery discrete

behind a hedgerow of hawthorn and yew,

with the Grand Union Canal nearby

and its Hatton Flight of locks, twenty one in

two miles, opened in 1799

when Chopin was not even a twinkle

and the six nations of the Iroquois –

a confederate democracy –

were each ceding their skies, their rivers, their trees,

their stones to New York State…