This city is a wasteland of broken temples
and creaking pines, where the fountains wheeze and sputter into their bowls of lichened marble
From every street vent rises the dismal miasma of the sepulchre
Among the ruins, the dark roses are ragged as moth-eaten damask
and the tired nightingale trills like a rusty harpsichord
-all hope died here with the Golden One
Now I look East to the Promised Land of the opal arch and the diamond rains
where hives bristle and the honey flows