Delve deep, they dream, into artifice.

Leaking canisters of outrage,

the reflected torpor outside every garden shed.

Signs are written and held up

at intervals, proclaiming mute wisdoms:

‘GO HOME…’ ‘BRING BACK…’ ‘AND END TO…’

They do not waste breath on the

one central chain that drags their feet

through disaster and tragedy:

Reason.

 

Nor do they arrange words as

carefully, as they may their petunias

and geraniums, crowning their front lawns,

ears pressed listening for some change

beyond their high fences, sheltered and bordered.

Their homes behind fly the flag,

but across the sloping street they are smiled upon.

Cross-hatched, emblazoned, sinking slow

into a fiction without name or shape;

the palaces of the unchanged.