It was long, long after the wild exhortations
of Walt Whitman, American Bible;
long after Adam reincarnated had peopled
the fifty that now and then seemed like a union;
long after the road had been paved, widened,
extended, cemented, elevated and bridged –
it was then and only then that you decided
to take it up because no one else would.
But even then you could find it just in glances,
for your attention had been riveted to the
gridwork that had divided and flourished –
those screens that were interposed between us and him.
Bible, vault or hostel, it’s not that all the keys
were missing, but simply that he was right:
However benign the host one mustn’t linger.
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