Elegy for the Poets

Yesterday, another symphony house stuttered into static 

and a girl watched as her crimson balloon was 

devoured by the sky. In the city it rains crushed glass 

and memorials sprout like weeds. In the country, the poor 

beat madness from their bones with iron bars and pray to 

plastic gods. Isn’t it funny? These are the places we migrate to. 

These are the places we migrate from. We are poets. We calculate 

time not by seasons but by desecrations. So what do we know of 

remembrance, of geologists pressing amber against stilted sunlight, 

saying look, look what life has preserved? We, who were taught 

that metamorphosis is as simple as taking a metro. What do we 

know of love, of life —we, who only know genres of longing. 

We, who mistake a poem for a pulse.