sober than the small
town in winter
where, in and around
the towerless high street,
for-lease lots
lie in snow-
white terraces
like the fallow
garden plots of some
vast ice palace
from which precisely
no bells toll
to mark the mourning
of days gone by,
of auld lang syne
and its sallow dead,
because, colorless
though it is,
this is a dominion
they could never inhabit—
or so the powers
that be would insist:
damn it, snap
out of it, you nameless,
you ignorant! This
is the land
and the time
of the living.
