Alarms for the expected are straight
from Chirico, already out of style.
In the dark environs, somebody
loves us all, whatever you believe.
Why, why do we feel wasted,
wasted, wobbling and wavering, watched
through binoculars. Whatever the landscape
had of meaning, the dust hid
the people’s faces because I didn’t
know enough. At night you’d think:
“Write down useless notes in perfect
gibberish; make an uncertain comment;
dismiss all as trivial.” I saw
what frightened me most of all:
wretched uneasy buildings where
reasons end, the years and the walls
and the door in the blue pharmacy.
There is no way of telling
it is the Place de la Concorde.
(Andrew Shields, #111Words, a second cento with lines by Elizabeth Bishop, 14 December 2025)