I know another city, more solitary and composed,

Where the sky is far above where birds can fly,

Whose buildings wear a far more human trace than ours, but

Whose air cannot be breathed, whose lights cannot be faced.

I’ve drifted through its streets, eyes level with the ground,

I’ve moved around its pools and parks, up steps, and past its clocks,

From its avenues’ crowded trees I’ve heard its birds’ antiphonies,

While from its houses drummed the box sonatas of the earth.

They weren’t words or prosody, though that’s what I must write.

Painters painted shutters green, green-blue waters painted them.

An insect world burst into life when open doors invited them.

It was a city, but a sea as well, and every movement was a wave.

The distant things that are so strange among us here,

And willfully confused, move there to a familiar rhythm.

A bee assumed my hand, then a bloom, then a cloud.

From their gestures in the flow I recognized my own.

But, let me say, though great, it isn’t paradise,

Its solitude, immense, is plain to see.

But if this city, this being human, is our only worth,

It’s there we see with our own eyes what we must measure with.