broken glass, crushed mollusks.
Near dusk, just when the swale darkened
and the lights on the Throgs Neck Bridge clicked on,
the great, hewn diamond of Manhattan
rose above the Sound.
Its light made the crickets woozy.
Their voices unravelled like a spool of white thread
over miles of water, and we joined them,
blending our own shrill voices,
describing the future to each other
with such precision, such blind devotion
as would later serve memory
the jobs we'd wake to
the size and color of our houses
how beautiful our wives are
But what a strange city the future is
with its bodiless spires .
Our souls moved out like gulls toward it
whose eyes were the tiny beads of ink
which hold everything- the day rising,
smoke pouring out of chimneys,
the tireless water gnashing its slate teeth.
Laurence Lieberman
SLAVE PLATOONS GOUGING THE CAPITOL
Our
van glides
up a cobblestone road–
particolored, the mild grade
deadended in a paved bubble: this cul-de-sac opens
into a steep flight of stairs,
