The Wall

We don’t know the ins and outs
how should we? how could we?
It’s not for the likes of you and me to cogitate
high policy or to guess the inscrutable economy of
the pontifex
from the circuit of the agger
from the traverse of the wall.
But you see a thing or two
in our walk of life
walking the compass of the vallum
walking for twenty years of nights
round and round and back & fro
on the walls that contain the world.

You see a thing or two, you think a thing or two,
in our walk of life, walking for twenty years, by day,
by night, doing the rounds on the walls that maintain
the world

on the hard tread of the silex
on the heavy tread of the mound
up in the traversed out-work, stepping it at the
alert, down on the via quintana stepping it double-
quick by numbers to break y’r trio-heart
dug in wrong side the limes
or walled in back at depot?
it’s evens, more or less
as far as jumping to it goes.

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