We stand round blankly as walls.
Not as witnesses, no no no. No one
asks for a written record, they are sick of it.
No, we are made to
stand round blankly as walls.

Staring, ashen, into the distance. Waiting
for the chastising bulldozer to come raze us to the ground.
Oh, stop it ! Paranoia! This was only a correction,
a much-awaited (oh yes, for very many, quite clearly much-awaited)
return
to familiar hatreds.
Look, they do not
stand round blankly as walls.
Au contraire.

Indeed, why do we bother
anymore, to
stand round blankly as walls?

The paint is peeling off.
All that hopeful paint.
All that cloying romanticism.
All those colours. Every last one.
To reveal the dirty-white, mossy self
under all that self-righteous hauteur we displayed when
we stood blankly as walls.

Perhaps there is no bulldozer.
But there is no paint either,
and the masons are thoroughly discredited.
Embrace it.
Embrace the aspect of defeat, and persist.

Whatever happens.
Stand round blankly as
walls.