Three storeys of fading memories
Stand on a hill.
Uninhabitable.
I tread the ribcage of its staircase,
Dismantling the life it used to know.
Arteries of pipes bleed through ceilings;
The rooms are stopped up, the warm heart
Of the place stands cold and dark.
I buried a flyblown cat
Beside the front door.
Down on Ninth Ward,
They are still pulling bodies from the floodwater.
Doctors will come, with wrecking-balls;
Ivy trails its cannuli, ready
For the final euthanasia. I'm numb.
Eventually my home's bones will whiten on the hillside.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
Evocative Tan...perhaps the New American's first abandoned metropolis...a revealing playground for future archaeologies.