Oligarch — Summary

I tend to business with old man’s hands

as full of violence as a small city

two ices that ought to be moons in a garden gone bad

Show the whole poemHide the poem

Learn Poems app

Try the Learn Poems app

Everything from the website trainer, and more: new exercises, voice recording and sharing, reminders, quick review.

The speaker is an oligarch, or speaks as one, and the poem opens with a calm, almost bored line: "I tend to business." The ordinary phrasing makes what follows more unsettling. Those "old man's hands" are described as "full of violence / as a small city," so the speaker's grip on money and power carries real harm, spread out like the streets and people of a whole town.

The last image is the strangest. "Two ices that ought to be moons" suggests something cold and lovely that has gone wrong, perhaps the speaker's eyes, perhaps something he owns or has frozen over. They sit "in a garden gone bad," a place that should have been tended and alive but has rotted. Judging by the imagery, the speaker doesn't seem to feel guilt or even much of anything. The tone is detached, almost matter-of-fact. The mood is chilly and decayed: a quiet portrait of someone whose power has soured everything around him, and who simply carries on with business.

Read also

More by Dave Bonta

All poems
ContemplativeDave Bonta

Plea bargain

I hear half a beat of drum to serve time have half a hope in the meantime praise God
DreamyDave Bonta

Cibola 3

I awake in the dark and shake free of sheets & blankets, of down-filled quilt. The rituals of waking– the long, hot shower, the coffee–give
ContemplativeDave Bonta

In good light

On a maple’s pale bark, a zigzag ladder—old tooth-marks from a wandering snail? Green islands of moss