Classic Poem

When ideas, when thought itself,
flattens out, in a city,
and curves like a horseshoe,
when any rifle picked up by
a coward can crush a man,
when an entire city becomes
a trap, and its people turn
into mice,
when the newspapers become mere
funeral notices,
everything dies
everything is without life —
the water, the plants,
voices and colors.
Trees migrate, leaving their roots.
Geography is wrested
from its place; place escapes
and we the end of man.