Painting You
There is a city in your face,
I see it in the shadows this fierce light creates.
You build a new one every day –
Babylon was there, a shimmer of Jerusalem
And many a smaller place.
They will all fall but only one of them will rise again.
Are your cities sealed
Or do they flirt and flutter early, late?
At dusk do they admit the dark, showing their pearls,
Their lace to every night wind?
Straight past your gates
Long yellow fields jump up, stare brazenly,
Then race into the scrub.
Your wilderness is pocked with pixel men,
Their coppices and disappointed gods,
It has no tenements, no retail malls
And to stay out there too long makes you unreal.
You say you have no interest in unearthly laws
But then I see you glance.