The Millennial Pedestrian

The Drowned City

We soar above the ruins
foreigners from a strange future.
Toppled towers, rampart remnants,
houses, gardens, markets,
tumbled paving blocks and pillars,
streets once thronged
pass beneath us dark and green.

The city’s multitudes ignore the signs
if signs there are.
What of the ravens, black
upon the temple pediments?
We have always had ravens.
And in the entrails
there are always portents.
My neighbor is a snooping ass.
My daughter may be pregnant.
Our rulers cheat us.
The price of grain is ruinous –
you see why
I have to charge so much for bread.

A holy man, ignored,
preaches from a market corner.
He has had a vision:
strange vessels overhead,
faces peering down upon the town
through an atmosphere
too thick to breathe.
He sees the tangled streets
aswim with eels
the waving seaweed
trailing from the windows.

Even if the holy man is right, what of it?
Cities rise and fall, but not today.
Today I learn
who made my daughter pregnant
And I arrange his death.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 15th, 2006.
It's part of the New Poems category.
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