BENEATH PAVING STONES

 
 
BENEATH PAVING STONES

Beneath paving stones and columns
of a Roman metropolis
time flays golden skins
from bronze men

Palaces glitter on
in twilight years

Sunbursts
that would have titillated
Tut
himself

Kinema carries
an unreeling film
up
to heaven

I feel
I am getting
somewhere

I know the marble steps
the red carpets
each shelf of books
by Kim Il Sung

A solemn conductor
leads kindergartners

A grinning gallery of field hands
applauds
its own song

Youth in a young land
leaps
a stream

Where sailors once docked
farm boys play

Yet the sea still provides

The contented land

I ponder the future
beside a poster
of top-hatted Chief Oshkosh

Our Menominee friends
the teachers
the sturdy millworkers
the quiet-eyed children
with their ever-present ponies

Luxuries
of a lost life

When moviegoing
was high adventure,
extravaganzas
stock-in-trade

And in the end
trampolines
Evangelists
or a wrecker’s ball

Trapped
in holocaust

Grin
to please a god

Lady K