This is a collection of verses
scrawled to your self in the future
by homeless men—
a few sprawled on benches,
one or two in smart nooks
between tree trunks—
all strewn across the park
in the late
August dawn.
It was first sounded out on the breeze;
it whispers of adversaries,
wails of the sort
of contention which
the conspicuous
absence of women portends—
it warns you:
every morning (so far) is similar,
but it could have been very different;
it ruins the old lines,
stale soup queues now not even
worth standing in;
it trumpets: the gold rush is over
on compassion, there's a run
on cooperation. The foliage ringing
on the outskirts is still
green, but it knows:
presently
all is nourished, is kissed
by vague sun—but
by and by, every island paradise
in the city will be fumigated,
then cleansed—if not by a flood
of rain water, then
by the bitter
certain cruelty of the coming
season's wind.
