Black pitch tends to reveal in the way that
all artifice is purposed to conceal;
in the sealing-in of roofs and ceilings,
the shapes of edges and cornered Truth.
The utility of the space within
is shadow noise, manifest absences,
blue futures modeled in cubist blueprint,
provisions for happiness yet to come.
How strange the visage of brash Nature then,
when it crawls the alien trellises
of structured cities, itself becoming
the echoes of the edges it subsumes.
The strident life of squirrels and tan sparrows,
claiming corners unfinished or broken,
as if to call the whole era of man
a season they expected and welcomed,
seems a just reproach not to presumption
but the execution of the edges,
pointing out each flaw in that noble dream
like water’s path through the cracks in the pitch.
Living in the absences left to us —
turning beyond the shapes of history —
does not the past guide every step down
the braids that trail from its broken corners?
Every Monument a Marble Janus 