Library

after Czeslaw Milosz

Snow showers, lionesses, bakeries,

summer beds, armed rangers,

paradox and dream alight in me.

I rise from my porticoes

waiting for the children, who are poets.

The angled hands of builders

who made me for the working man

have fallen, autumn leaves.

Yet their children's children romp about in me.

Jasmine and wisteria hide my naked columns.

I feel the dewy damp of grass

and echo the nightly song of crickets.

Above, the evening star. The children have left me

constellations of beginnings.