Sitting On A Bench In The Morning

Whatever madness resides,
whatever paranoia, perversity,
boredom, ambition;

whatever private violence dwells
in people, there is still this
at least,
and not everything has been hollowed out.

The sun exists. It bleeds
daily
out of the sky for us, it crawls
over the buildings with its shadows.

The green plants push up against the old iron gates,
the animal brains fire in the animal heads...

Whatever loneliness or useless thoughts or
damage, or propaganda;
whatever little need coated in ideology;
whatever gods or non-gods;
whatever harsh or peaceful worship;
whatever distorted wishing or slow vanishing—
there is this.
There is this, still.

The sparrows and pigeons awake,
bathe in a black pool of our accumulation,
dry themselves
on the toasted steps to the fountain.
The fountain.

The beach, somewhere in Oregon
with its foggy features of black sand
and maybe a dog, or in Florida
the green waves depositing shells
prehistoric,
compounded with the eyes, teeth and limbs
of unknown, long extinct things.

In the Midwest the doves hoot, and a man
crouches at the flat grass of his own grave
and admires it.

I am somehow glad for the
population of ghosts inside of me.
As they gather
like dark birds gather, still with a
place to gather,

And have not been replaced by the same
no nothing
that has been conceived of, and is easy, and is easily imagined.