This City
After C. P. Cavafy (& AES)

The ruins urge you to find a new city,
look for another shore. Even the broken finger
of a still white statue in the park points
westward. You could take that advice,
travel, find your way far from the hungry,
the shut-down stores, hope for another life.
But you are mesmerized by the ignited people
and that priest or bishop in the park,
missing half his finger (who knows what his story is,
a thrown rock aimed for the statue's face
hit his raised hand instead?)—they won't leave you—
the gouged marble, the graffiti scrawls,
the statue standing like something outraged
remind you, you who yearned to live beyond this,
that hope marked you, too.

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Copyright © 2018 Adrianne Kalfopoulou All rights reserved
from A History of Too Much
Red Hen Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission