Europe

Summary

Today, you say, and all the stones can hear you

each building with its ankles, nape, and bones

watches with its stone-eyes for your footsteps and holds its

converts

closer to its dome they listen to sopranos who've trained

years

to glide a flightless note through this stone sky –

but we will not feign a smoothness,

we'll push past, like a kid impatient, refer to others’

rhythms of breath, beyond our shifting

grain of skin and eyes – because today,

you say, another man was buried

(push past) and the stones may hear but only we

speak back. And we are unsolved

and unsalvageable

and when we go we cannot take our ruins.