It would take more than that to banish me:
this is my kingdom still.
Turn, look up
Through the gritty window: an unexplained
wilderness of wires.
Though they buried me in monuments
of concrete slabs, of cables
though they mounted a pyramid
of cold light over my head
though they said, we will build silver paradise
with a bulldozer
it shows how little they know about vanishing:
I have my ways of getting through.
Right now, the snow is no more familiar to you than it was to me: this is my doing.
The grey air, the roar going on behind it
are no more familiar.
I am the old woman sitting across from you on the bus,
her shoulders drawn up like a shawl;
Out of her eyes come secret hatpins, destroying the walls,
the ceiling
Turn, look down:
there is no city;
this is the center of a forest
Your place is empty.
A Monument
