Now In Retrospect

What we did in fifty years

Will not be undone in five hundred.

The years went by so slowly:

In a lifetime you could have sat

And whiled away at your window

Like an old man.

You could have nodded,

Neither in sleep or assent,

And seen the sky dismantled by cranes.

In the wink of an eye

You could have heard the wind

Sighing in all directions

And still not seen the walls go up

That separate the world.

© BH 1979

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And still they go up. Walls.

All I did was nod.

Hmmm.