Absent tin workers wisp aphorisms,
gasp history is an obituary of nations,

so you kick a copy of Astronautics:
Today and Tomorrow and, curiously,
it chimes of shivered glass. Winter

is in its tenth month. Fifty more years,
then October. You have no concern

for the steel playground wind-kinked
into scoliotic monument, open-air
auditorium, fenced pasture sagging,

and walk into the square, guffaw
and whinny like a tsars candelabra,
snuff your cigarette into the snow.

Paint chips strip, spin like ptarmigan
off the housing blocks. The skin
of the city does not molt, but husks.

Every building has an abdomen
lining of magazines, fashion posters
that tatter into small eras. Briefly,

you escape in the river of a wall mural
and substitute its sound with linens.