When Foreign Companies who are building extremely complex
products, machines, and various other “things,”
Seoul claps its hands and sings and louder sings
until the booted masks show up; the wrecks
of ripped-up visas the bored guard inspects;
the homebound flight delayed, but as it wings
West, the thought: bet better with Jinpings
than hopefully consult the haruspex
on what the White House wants, knows, or remembers—
long in the tooth but biting still and sore,
belly-ached, bad-backed, and finger-numb,
tottering into one of life’s Novembers—
if not the last, then near to nevermore—
you know first stop: always Byzantium