This is a question of statecraft: are we not loved?
Acrylic fires leave the ash of nation behind.
There is wealth here now, or there will be;
or, their love was not enough. Only the dead
may have their histories, now just fissures
read by the scraping of tremulous finger,
dry lips. Sometimes, a strange beauty endures:
the shadows of animals slink across cubicles
and billboards, a crowd’s voice caught
in the glissando of decades,
and at the end of long hallways—a grove of olive trees.
When we are finished, there will be no one left but us.
