By David Lipowski

The trees on the horizon are

                           cracks in the still twilight sky;

 the curtain of dark clouds above parts
for the beggar’s moon.

O what celestial hand could hold it

               (for a pre-modern man)

But that of a burning God

                                                       who set the planets on their course

and wove the majestic tapestry of stars;
who spun hurricanes,
and whose massive ball of raving gas,

                                                      forever burning,

                           permits Us;

Vast, Unreachable, Creator, Master, Explainer of Things
(but those who would ask awaken at the atom’s apple)
to seek consul of cement, iron bars,

                                                                 prediction, method¡ª

The palace,

             but a city with the audacity

                                to be itself twice.