Building Site

Between the buildings 
                                    trees reach down
            to languages 
                                    of soil and worms,
                                               leaves gloss argots of glass and steel;
            woods lie down on floors 
                                                          to bounce back
every word,     every word 
                                               you speak 
with the long
            echo of your footsteps down into the mud.

In simultaneous decay and growth
                                                          this maze of streets and squares 
puts down its roots,
                       unsettling the ground 
                                               with every new inflection, every 
demolition: first the trees, then the wooden 
                                               houses, bricks, the broken concrete.
Look, 
            now you can see in the ruins how 
                                    buildings took hold and pushed up
            through your bones, rubble, walls of earth,
                                               this tangle of useless pipes.