You Could Pick It Up

You could pick it up by the loose flap of a roof and all the houses would come up together in the same pattern attached, inseparable white cubes, olive trees, flowers dangling from your hand a few donkey hooves might stick out flailing the air for balance, but the old women would cling like sea urchins and no children would fall. Even though it is small, the people are Greek, and it sits like an oyster in the middle of the Aegean still it is tough, it reminds you of wagon trains, prairie schooners drawn up in circles by night you could swing it around your head and still nothing would happen, it would stay solid, the white walls rising up out of the sea the pillared crown of the temple... For twenty-six hundred years it has endured everything, but now we who have forgotten everything, we whose homes have all gone to super highways, belt cities, long thin lines our glittering buses snort into the main square, the spider web with sticky fingers glues itself to the town, slowly it begins to revolve, faster and faster tighter and tighter it is wound till the young men cannot stand it, they pack up and leave town the sky is full of children with wild eyes and huge faces falling to the ground.