Once removed, the policeman’s gray
starched shirt, blue short pants, seem idyllic.
Nostalgia builds, calcified in mounds, in the heart’s cave.

Patent leather belts can keep a queen in place,
we know, despite ourselves (and love it still).

It may be that glinting buckles shine the same
as Taurus in spring – and that misfortune is an
equinox for a people.

The sidewalk is a rough collage of faces,
ambassadors for those too busy crossing
the junction to see its roads turn like the hands

of a clock with the passing day, the fulcrum
of a city that questions itself.