All is aftermath
Events have occured
Responses to events have occured
Wherewhen recollection reconstructs
On a foundation already riddled
With memories of dread guilt and ignorance
Morose addendum

Another springtime and its golden hosts
These hills that rise above organic decay
For a moment the city’s heart is quiet
A city of the past
With its immemorial rhythms
Compressed between frenzy and coma
A moment a slim cleavage
But not even then
For this for everything
Shades of the prison house
Earth’s diurnal course
Perennial

So no
We are not tranquil
Nor will recollection be denied
With the disturbance it brings
Perhaps you had power
We have lost
Or perhaps your reassurances
Came colored
With well-meaning self-deception
Or perhaps the world is even darker now
Trying to shelter
Beneath the viaduct

Reassurance requires simple faith
Some can bring themselves to believe
That all we behold is full of blessing
But it cannot be
These vacancies
These spots of desolation
What are we to speak of
To speak through
Not with emotion
Thus discomposed

I wish that I could say
Regret that I cannot say
Mind and man
Fair trains of imagery

I feel not see
How beautiful things are
Those things wherein beauty might dwell
A tangle of appearances
Imposing a feeble will
Nor is one free to choose
Toward which features of the landscape
To turn a blind eye
These many moments
Their cramped interstices

Tranquility having failed
We are not poets
Or we are