An untitled poem from Adam Kirsch’s new book Invasions:

The long, squat, leaden-windowed, burrow-like
Offices terracing the Palisades
Seem the earliest architecture, such as make
On Aghan mountains bombproof barricades—
Or anywhere a Third World tenantry
Survives our televised annihilation
By clamping down and taking root. To see
On the Hudson echoes of that habitation
Once could provoke humility, the theme
For abstract reveries that all is flux.
staring across the river now, it seems
A sign of how civilization self-destructs:
Their single-minded virtuous contempt,
Our bashful Alexandrian tolerance,
Our glass towers and their common, huddling, cramped,
Impregnable cliffside. We don’t stand a chance.

Click on the book cover below to purchase Invasions by Adam Kirsch.