Inspired by the Metropolitan Monument To Triumphant Brutalist Materialism

 

What Titanic floods came to carve

the massive canyons of New York

clasped on its ancient, sturdy hills

and what force let the sea surge so close

 

and deeper into all its abrased soil?

There, the city’s skyscrapers pile on

litanies of new towering Babylons.

or is it perhaps Babyl, Babel, Babilu,

 

or even—in its later Turkic form—

another hut of Baba Yaga’s twirling

on a chicken’s leg—cheeky and ready

 

in waiting for a hero or a lass to hop?

Otherwise, the earthly city’s spiky teeth

will gnash at the gods till nothing is left—