128. Surveillance

Somehow the night gives pause
to this commonplace
world

An empty library lit in the
late winter darkness
glows with a new
fervour

Devoid of blood,
do we finally see its
architecture, itself for
itself?

All this
wasted electricity, which could power
a small African
village
or whose space could
house a thousand
hobos

Such irony, such impossible
possibility, is this what
we observe –

plants in an oft-neglected
window,
the tantalizing glow of a
pop
machine?

In this silence,
I reclaim
sight

Never at home when others
occupy these walls,
it is in
contemplative silence
that these buildings
seem as lonely as I
am

Yet emptied of follies,
they are locked and cold; and I
must go
before the moon begins
suspecting