Found Poems

He cultivated the spectacular, dressed in a bizarre
Mixture of European fashions and relieved his dark attire
With a sash or plume of unexpected

And violent red. In his pale, dry face
The equally vivid color of his lips
May perhaps not have been nature’s work alone…

Born under a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter,
Wallenstein’s stars gave him a peculiar mixture
Of weakness and strength, vice and virtue.

Changeable in his humors, quarrelsome,
Friendless, and cruel. So far the analysis
Of Johan Kepler

From the position of the stars over Hermanice
At four in the afternoon on September 14th 1583,
When Wallenstein was born.