From a soaking-
wet perch
on a bridgefull of belching
John F. Kennedy memorial traffic—
even the ordinarily
electrified downtown
looks curiously
distant and half-
missing this morning—
replaced instead with
a confounding
and a gray
edgeless series
of arcane rectangular
facades looming in stiff mist—
like some
ancient objects
perhaps built
long ago
as monuments—
to all those who came
and left
before
their pale builders—
the entire race of whom
it seems
was eventually
wiped off the planet—
by its own sick ambition
and a sheer lack
of rest.