look close, the old world moldering,
unsightly damage year by year,
the yellow sun yet billowing,
indifferent to all we fear--
the sacred disappearing,  god
reduced to holding seances
behind an aging, thin facade
of emperors and witnesses,
whose outer dark is just the street
gaslit by hawkers selling shade
half guaranteed to stand the heat
on sidewalks chalked where children played,
as life gets marked down, sold by lots,
and mothers visit mounded plots