The month is warm October.
Out of green bags ripe rubbish unfolds upon the boulevards.
Plague is blackening where the sun is spreading
In a flat intense film on the walls of the capitol.
No chips of light glitter from bright granite.
The glare in the neighborhoods, too level and too heavy,
Oppresses new automobiles and red hedge flowers.
Refuse blows about the beaches
In a dirty wind. Papers slide a little.
The slack sea slaps upward into trash
That no one takes care of:
There is not land enough.
For the city is an island.
It has always been an island.
And it is sealed.
A city should shudder and warp
With contradictory noises
After early traffic subsides.
Here instead is an undifferentiated humming
With dead intervals
Into which bird cries fall without ringing.
Everywhere silence increases
Because voices sound wrong
And you live here.
You have wished for a bridge,
And there are no bridges
Elsewhere you've seen steel spans
Arching from concrete
That lift dark road and hang them over a bay.
But this island lies where it will never be joined.
Nothing is close enough.
It is alone.
It can fail of its own folly.
That failure can defeat you
But you cannot walk away,
Raise a rebuffing hand,
Give up and go home.
This is where you live.
Daily the jets depart in their single gesture,
The splendid arc of escape.
Their freedom is not yours.
You live here.
The island is your city.
You live where what is human has gone wrong.
For this the red earth reeks, the ocean is foul
The filming air corrosive.
The island chokes.
How will you save it?
You will have to swallow the unconditional promise
Given you years ago of kindness exchanged.
It will not hold: its taste is tears and ashes.
You have to embrace another passionate image
As old as forgiveness. Grow strong, labor,
And bid to the mind's eye a savage friend and a cold
Who loved the law and kept it with wisdom and simpleness,
And measure by that image how much you honor the city.
You will not even want to leave.