The whole city was said to be on strike,
And yet the workmen labored everywhere
To build new incongruities on old
On rubble and on bad-rock and on stone.
It was awake and yet it slumbered. O
It dreamed erotic fantasies of lust
And power, and it breathed in noisy breathes.
The pounding and the bells were all around.
Much like a stranger I had wandered on,
Oblivious to evil and to crime,
Swept-up by our transmuting life, by tides
Transducing all to some revolting force,
And wrapped illogically in schools and books
Where pages lie unopened evermore.
Jay Cohen