Every colorful verse is a mirror

To the smoke stacks billowing,

To the columns of machines

Waging wars long forgotten

–

Like the rippling image  

In a stream of rainwater,

Filled with passing ghosts  

Seeking warmth in the gutters

–

An exhausted old dream

Unfolds between the lines,

The worn rhetoric of men

Who wear the masks of their gods

–

Every word is a stone

Thrown with slurs and shells

Taken up from the ground

To build a traveler’s refuge