Liber Terrae - Chapter 57

Verses

I entered the city through a drainpipe because doors are an insult invented by solids.

Beneath the avenue I found an old stream imprisoned in concrete, still running toward a river that remembered its name.

Cities pretend to defeat Earth by covering her.

Then roots lift the pavement one finger-width at a time.

Rain finds the basement. Moss finds the wall. Pigeons annex the statues. Earth has excellent irregular troops.

At midnight the towers glitter like a second constellation built by creatures who disliked the first being unreachable.

I admire that arrogance.

Asphalt is only ancient life cooked black and spread over younger life so automobiles may hurry to appointments.

No poet invented that sentence. Industry did.

The subway shakes the bones of forgotten cemeteries and nobody misses a train for them.

Above, a cat sleeps on a warm transformer box like a minor god of stolen electricity.

I asked him who owned the city. He yawned with administrative confidence.

Human beings say “nature returns” when weeds enter a vacant lot, as if nature had been waiting outside the municipal boundary.

Concrete is geology with deadlines.

Glass is sand taught transparency by fire.

Even the city is Earth dreaming in right angles and waking through cracks.