Fogscape

by Adam Cornford

The sky of April has collapsed / a bombed overpass
sodden cement-gray clouds have fallen onto the city

Now fog drifts are driven across below tower windows
tattering / moving slowly by like exhausted refugees

past the still skeletal birches and maples in the park
no birds / only the tuneless sound-slush of traffic

and the polyphonic hollow whine of distant machines
between blank staring cliffs of high-rise apartments

Elsewhere more northern fog is seared by detonations
rocket-shriek tearing the faces off cities like this one

while the wind-dragons wreathing the globe twist in agony
as slow heat stifles the air with bloated swags of vapor

Far below them cars slide to and fro in their routine tracks
like the lies we are still told by the Tar God’s priesthood

the lies of day by day pretending / as our days diminish
as the futures we were promised dissolve and boil away