The Polished Stage

Ruins are sweeter
Than wilderness and
Emptiness sweeter

Than any ruin—
The kind of empty
Standing abandoned

Only yesterday,
Nothing yet destroyed,
A little sway-backed,

Perhaps, a little
Soft desuetude,
But not real ruins—

The empty country
Road through emptying
Landscapes. That sweet pang

That’s not nostalgia—
Melancholic joy
In the theater

Of the world briefly
Resembling your worn
Theater of skull.