Elena!
by Kevin Brophy
We are building the ruins.
It is taking a long time.
There will be almost nothing
but what has not been plundered:
shattered shoulders of concrete,
glass, tiles, the deepest foundations.
What was here will have to be imagined—
Skies will be so empty whole cities
will stand imagined in them.
We are building the ruins.
It is taking forever.
This is what gives us time
to do it thoroughly.
Walls won’t hide the wealth forever.
The lifts will stop ascending.
The ruins will be shattered vowels
and last unbreakable consonants
left for latecomers to imagine
what might have been said
from a second-story window
on a Sunday morning late in April
when a woman called from the street
Elena! Elena! —
to her friend above.
We are building the ruins.
The work is never finished.
We will leave almost nothing in our wake.
We are building ruins upon ruins.
We do this for our children.
Dusk will eat the day.
Night will teach us its gnomic lessons.
Our bed sheets still repeat the pattern:
Each morning bed a crumpled ruin.
Elena, leaning over her red geraniums
on her window sill calls back down to her friend
in a voice that carries all that will be ruined.
Kevin Brophy is the author of thirteen books of fiction, poetry and essays, including Walking: New and Selected Poems (John Leonard Press 2013). From 1980 to 1994 he was founding co-editor of Going Down Swinging. He is patron of the Melbourne Poets Union and a life member of Writers Victoria. In 2015 he was poet in residence at the Australia Council BR Whiting Studio in Rome. He teaches Creative Writing at the University of Melbourne.
Photo credit: Nick Walton-Healey.