The walls are pliable, permeable,
But those big bills bully
Us smaller ones into charity,
As race to the top
Of morality’s sheer bovine cliffs
Where light, so little light, beams in.
How have the seams resisted
Temptation to burst?
These walls are not strong—
No, that is a myth,
Just as these arms
Are made of paper
These fists of hempen stitch
Made fit to hold aloft
A debtor’s desires, his weight in gold
Under the largesse of
Bigger denominations,
In their shadows, where round
Light passes, galactically bent
Those heavenly bodies
Which, to comprehend,
Invites a schizophrenia—
But, how natural
If the world beyond here
Does not reach out,
If we, too, are made of the same,
It wishes to come in—
Perhaps it already has
And lets us know in its groaning.