Survey

I am so lonely for the twentieth century, for the deeply felt, obscene graffiti of armed men and the beautiful bridges that make them so small and carry them into the hearts of cities written like words across nothing, the dense void history became in my beautiful century. When a man talks reason, he postpones something. He gets in the way of a machine that knows him for the sad vengeance he is, somewhere close to the bald name of his city. "New York" means "strike back." "Attica" means "strike back" and so does anyplace in the world in the huge eyes and tender hands of my century. I went to the capital. I had a banner, and there were thousands of people like me. There was an airplane, and for a moment heavy with laurel and sprays of peach blossom something that has never happened before stretched like a woman's shadow on a hedge between the plane and the people who saw it flying. It was the real name of the century. It told everyone to strike back until there was no reason in the world except a machine stalled overhead that knows everyone and is as delicate as peach blossom. But the poor years come too late.