The Kingfisher

The Retiring

I have crawled the face of this tower a fly among tyrants
I have listened to the streaming war,
I have cried with the lost fathers who sit among the crumbling walls,
Who sing silent to the burning skies and rage with forlorn madness in the ruins of the electronic age, 
who scream at the unyielding machines,
the lying ghosts of your heart, and mine,
Who wait for me like stalking beasts in unexpected pages and the moldy thoughts of revolution,
Who cry out when I close my eyes,
blinded by the needs of another’s sight, 
broken and tired among the towers of this paper city.

I have tried on the clothes of war and spoken with fire, 
I have cowered in the dark and embraced an outrageous lie, 
in love with the gleaming steel of perfection,
In love with an empire grown cold in its beauty,
in love with the sharp lines of the modern dream in which we are both architect and steel, 
ghost and machine.

We are the fragile children now caged, 
We are the jailers, 
We are the whispered prayer buried in the rubble of your civility.