Discover the names of this, that and the other,
establish a foothold, survey the lot,
absorb the tenor of your surroundings, decide
precisely what is litter, what merely debris,
what of each you are responsible for,
decide, in other words, how much of it might be
taken back up, how much of it left out to rot…
Was all this more than we could contend with?
It was a question we often put to ourselves
in our collectivization of open tracts.
How amazed we were that time when, thinking
eternity had just begun, we found ourselves
in the shadows of ruins carved in our own image,
erected over there in morning’s well,
the sluices choked up with unmanageable weeds.
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