Romania I: Imperfect prose

Old man with a cane, tipped hat.
A skeleton dressed in sports coat and tie,
You shuffle the street with the steps of the aged,
Visions wash through watery eyes
When these buildings were a youth and a beauty
Instead of the bag of bones they’ve become.
An age when rectangles didn’t dot the skyline
And all you could see on a clear dry day were cumulus and sunflowers, bowing their heads
Waiting to dry and die.

You, bent over a stick
And they, only monument istorics?
Tombs marking ancient goodness
Just as big bloc buildings mark an old evil.

A folded paper stuck under your arm
A few steps until you reach a bench and
The pleats of your paper become the folds
Of your body resting on wood.

It all rests on so little a thing
As wood and bone and beauty.