Closed for demolition March 1st, 2024
When this world has fulfilled its purpose,
run a victory lap around the sun
and spun one final daytime into night,
sending the last full moon over mountains
like a dove that shall never return
before earth rolls up and burns—
before this luminous intelligence
is released with a vote of thanks,
the gods who grew up here gather
for one more walk through its palaces
and slums, the seashores and gardens
where they harvested memory,
noses and toes awash again
in the grime and grist of awakening.
And even deified, they learn
how different this world smells
from all the others they’re making,
like the moment you stepped inside
your house just after the mission,
breathed in and for the first time named
the bread and fabric softener scent of home.
Walking backwards, holding hands,
with tears they believed that eons of divinity
would finally give them dominion over,
they watch the pulling out of stakes,
that grand old firmament collapse
in flood and fire, in ashes and then silence.
A smudge of dust where once the blue marble hung:
the dirt that birthed them waiting their command.
Kevin Klein‘s new collection,
Loved Ones, includes this poem.
He once edited our
Wine into Water issue.
