It would take more than that to banish
me: this is my kingdom still.
Turn, look up
through the gritty window: an unexplored
wilderness of wires
Though they buried me in monuments
of concrete slabs, of cables
though they mounded a pyramid
of cold light over my head
though they said, We will build
silver paradise with a bulldozer
it shows how little they know
about vanishing: I have
my ways of getting through.
Right now, the snow
is no more familiar
to you than it was to me:
this is my doing.
The grey air, the roar
going on behind it
are no more familiar.
I am the old woman
sitting across from you on the bus,
her shoulders drawn up like a shawl;
out of her eyes come secret
hatpins, destroying
the walls, the ceiling
Turn, look down:
there is no city;
this is the centre of a forest
