love your city

[poblenou]

hot breath & an ice cold shoulder.
kissed beneath a tremendous blanket on a humble bed.

how you gonna tell the ice queen to play it cool?

social unrest.
sleep is not for the wicked, but what wicked sleep it is.

(what happened to my dreams?)

interest piqued quickly turns to interest peaked.

frost. (peeking in)
bite.
you. (speaking in -)

tongues – unravelled. un-reveled.

it’s harder to tell just how cold she is in the winter.

and yet the books will be there on the shelves, separate beings,
that appeared once, still wet 
as shining chestnuts under a tree in autumn,
and, touched, coddled, began to live
in spite of fires on the horizon, castles blown up,
tribes on the march, planets in motion.
“we are, ” they said, even as their pages
were being torn out, or a buzzing flame
licked away their letters. so much more durable
than we are, whose frail warmth
cools down with memory, disperses, perishes.
i imagine the earth when I am no more:
nothing happens, no loss, it’s still a strange pageant,
women’s dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley.
yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born,
derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.

- c. milosz, and yet the books