Shelter

SHELTER

But Faust was not the first 

to lament the limits of the best

blueprints, the soundest studies 

in architectural excellence,

for keeping out the rain. 

Before him were many a man 

who on a sunny Summer day 

would sit outside the gates—

the open gates of the city—

in the refined if quiet company 

of dead minds who know 

a thing or two of cities, how 

they work. And then the thunderhead, 

and for all his knowledge

of cathedral roofs and how 

they hold, his own now sogs, 

                    sags.