Stunned in that first estrangement,

We went through the turning woods

Where inflamed leaves sick as words

Spun, wondering what the change meant.

Half gone, our road led onwards

By barbed wire, past the ravine

Where a lost couch, snarled in vines,

Spilled its soiled, gray innards

Into a garbage mound.

We came, then, to a yard

Where tarpaper, bottles and charred

Boards lay on the trampled ground.

This had been someone’s lawn.

And, closing up like a wound,

The cluttered hole in the ground

A life had been built upon.

In the high grass, cars had been.

On the leafless branches, rags

And condoms fluttered like the flags

Of new orders moving in.

We talked of the last war, when

Houses, cathedral towns, shacks—

Whole continents went into wreckage.

What fools could do that again?

Ruin on every side—

We would set our loves in order,

Surely, we told each other.

Surely. That’s what we said.