Seen from a certain distance
the world, you’d say, is a pleasant place
to live, a small maquette
for a toy in which each element fits
painlessly – because the scars
can be seen only when close up,
when you focus with the microscopic lens
of reckless questions and you see
everything you never believed existed.
From the plane, on the other hand, the city
seems made with tenderness, as though someone
had gone about putting in place the roofs
with their slates, outlining the flower-beds,
deciding which way the smoke should blow,
building the geometric shapes
that shine in the sun. Some painstaking
craftsman has introduced the pieces
with long, clockmaker’s pliers
into this vast glass bottle.
The privilege of being an observer,
however, does not last long. What is the sensible
distance for living without taking hurt,
without breaking or being broken? Early or late,
the plane begins its descent to the white-hot
heart of matter, passes through
the safety membrane
and lands amid the hustle and bustle of blood,
in the midst of you yourself, of me,
of all of us, sufficiently close
to do us harm, cramped and anxious as we are
like tiny bacteria, searching for the sign
lit up in green which should tell us
the immediate exit to nowhere.