PAD Day 27: How the Mighty

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a poem titled "New ______," and (2) "W.H. Auden’s 'Musée des Beaux Arts' takes its inspiration from a very particular painting: Breughel’s 'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.' Today we’d like to challenge you to write your own poem that describes a detail in a  painting, and that begins, like Auden’s poem, with a grand, declarative statement."

I was reviewing the webpage of the Harvard Art Museums (on the invitation of Maureen from NaPoWriMo) and one early 19th century cartoon etching caught my eye. It resonated because of the glee the main subject showed in bringing an end to the rule of a once-great despot. I thought, "If only..." and wrote this poem. (I wasn't able to come up with a satisfactory title beginning with "new", so I'll write another poem, probably on the subject of my birthday -today! - as I do most years.)

The Fire This Time
(after “Snuffing Out Boney!” by George Cruikshank, 1814)
 
They burn bright for a while,
those who want to rule the world,
but sooner or later they begin to flicker.
 
The Cossack in Cruikshank’s etching,
just off his horse and still in his spurs,
takes a candle-snuffer, a pincer-like tool
 
To a terrified, candle-sized Bonaparte,
whose dying flame is about to be pinched out
at the wick. The Russian soldier,
 
fresh from the front, is mad with glee
to have cornered the great Napoleon,
as another drawing hangs on the wall,
 
another rendition with the Cossack
lowering a large snuffing cone.
His flame guttered in the Russian campaign,
 
and the emperor was forced into shame and exile
before his final goals could be won.
If only we were really ready to do that now,
 
to extinguish the blaze that is burning
everything from under us, to snuff it out
before it becomes the wildfire it aspires to be.