All of you undisturbed cities, Have you ever longed for the Enemy? – Rilke

In a city, in an anonymous century At evening, fighting fire with fire Someone is grafting these lines

Onto streets, which funnel winds through them, Full of smells: spittle, urine, crack and muggers. Where immanent danger seems greater than the imminent.

Where has madness gone to hide? Laughter these days is that of horrors. Heat assailing the body is that of a fever.

The disinterested life leads to disenchantment with Numerous playthings such as switch blade knifes Or the more easily switch able bodies.

The only refuge from the Enemy is the Enemy himself. See there, he is up on the stage. In this age when guitars become Axes, music becomes fire thrown from the catapults.

In this evening when everyone conceals A Hiroshima, Dear, how does it matter how large or bloody Is the force of the foe waiting for me At the gate, just beyond the end of this line?

This desire you harbor is weak. It is a spider spinning a web Hoping to join two chairs. There is no union in this Many holed net. First learn To melt the iron of ego. Then God will teach you how to weld.

I see Moses, the neighbor’s dog, playing with her. She is holding a number of things: a ball, a disc, a ring.

He looks up at her, his tail wagging, whimpering, saying, 'Quick! Give me this or that. I want to play now.'

She throws a ball and he races after it, not knowing he can't keep it for always.

He comes back loping, the ball clenched between his jaws. He runs around her in circles

Unwilling to relinquish the ball. Whimpering again as she pries it away from his mouth.

We are full of the same foolishness.

We whimper to God to throw us things. We know it is only play yet how we whimper again, when it's time to give the ball up!

Again she throws the ball out. And Moses dashes after it Barking in time to her clapping.

What am I but a dog playing imperfectly with the universe! And what is this poetry but my barking!