The desire to have been inside it will one day set us in motion
Elsewhere—the ever-nearer. Was this the fizzy presabsence
So famous one summer between steam and the panoramas?
Somehow we became friends with the mayors and managers
Of the necropolis of symbols once seen only at a distance
Across water. He lived there on intimate terms with an iguana.
Something can no longer be read in the latest billboards
And the facades along the canal have been sheathed in mirrors.
The neighborhood which is a continent and every room a cathedral
Must be every neighborhood. A certain amount of monumentality
With one’s coffee will not overturn the hay-cart of everyday life
And must be abandoned yet again if we would like to be captive
To experimental forms of the game. We the delandscaped.
We who have showed fine and lyrical deference toward any of this.
All this drawing near. All these boat-shaped cities Louis-Georges
All these railings made of iron sentences ending. All these
New guidebooks with their colors indexed to tell us how to feel
When we get there. All this time with its greener-than-thou.
