As No Art Is

The weekend’s on us, and no means of soothing it
or kissing it away. The flat facades
of mansion blocks curve towards silence. The sun
gets everywhere in this canyon, but property
holds its desperations in: the same flying ant
is all that moves along the same trouser folds.

I go to the park for late afternoon to arrive
among the memorials in their set-back space,
their immortality in the last century,
their short life-spans. What settles on this time
is not a haze or mist, but a half-visible
moderation of the light among the trees

in which appear the hour-long married with
their picture-takers, from the distance down
the long paths hurrying, where sunlight falls
on patches between fallen leaves spread flat
by sudden July showers. Two by two they come,
the new from the known-to-eachother easily told

by the lonely watching eye; and stiffly stand
under their chosen heads of coiffured stone,
to smile once more — once more — and be caught,
in a flash or without one, at the most real,
the most complete, time of their day or night,
— Then it’s all done with, and their hands are free.