Romance

At the terminations of long streets,
in long-neglected corners,
miasmic fogs malinger in the night.

Well, and you remember—
c’est vrai que vous vous souvenez?—
it’s true that you remember laughter at the corners?

But now is the time la Rouchefoucald and Dante laugh,
the former because he was always a cynic,
the latter because a man, even with Virgil his guide,
finds this corner too hot an inferno.

Now these long-neglected corners are forgotten,
or given up to cycles of “renewal” and decay,
and encircled in decayed, miasmic smoke,
and trampled underfoot like cigarette-butts.