Clean as meat cut by a cleaver,
the concrete edifice sponges up the halogen
beams. The polite lamps hide
in beds of river-washed stones
and beneath the flowering shrubs.
Pinned-tie neat and scrubbed,
the building is too new to be noticed,
though it could hangar a couple
of Parthenons or that Roman shell
ablaze in Baalbek reds
that stands in books filled with ruins.
The senses alone do not make awe happen,
to the garage’s spectacular loss.
The marble-stripped, bullet-pocked,
weather-emblazoned wall, brick, and shard
are the eye’s inverted sirens, wrecked
and of song long emptied.
Scar trains the will–makes the carcass live
in the reverential mind.