Statueless Architecture Poem by Brenda Hillman

I passed through nature

into the next. Children

running in unsupervised shadows.

Last century's fountains learning

not to lie. Risk

to identify with only

one element since one

will die but in

the summer air around

each thought, something is

built and avoided. You

go through an arch

and aren't the arch,

just infinity of form,

curve's curve of becoming,

a phrase tracking it

to future's celadon relief.

As others dressed as

others we were supposed

to meet. Citizens walked

here without disappointment, seeing

no statue or palace

with eleven axes, patient

in the mindless heat—