Abandoned Cities

“Better just to remember

An animal disappeared

Into the wildwood.” A bear,

A person, tens of millions

Of persons, a dynasty,

A few civilizations.

I’m talking about the past.

All these things already

Happened, many times. Again,

It’s heartbreaking just to read

The Old English, the Chinese

Poets mourning abandoned

Ruins, several hundred years

At a stretch, hundreds of years

Before their greatest empires

Rose and ruled on those ashes.

Better just to remember

Poets gone into the woods.