CAROL ALEXANDER

Is it true our civilization is on the brink of collapse?

You say so, our wine glasses upside down.
Neither of us can. A wasp prowls the bread plate
while I ask you to translate a German poem.
Something exasperating about this other version,
fecund, yet tight-lipped. Only toward the end
does the loneliness grey out early purples
as we read backwards, according
to death dates. The subway train I take downtown
is a cutting away from a pleasant shroud;
I sit here savaging a hunk of bread
wondering about cracked roads and aquifers,
undeclared wars and artificial brains.
Our era attracts madmen whose expletives
are the modern medium of exchange.
You are always eager to interrogate facts
though our talk will end with
I don’t know. Our age is slippage and verdigris.
The plated fish has capers for eyes
with a lemon smile. How long I’ve washed out
gold fragments from the stream. I can’t fix anything
but the frilly axolotl, tiny Aztec god,
is churning out fresh limbs, a heart,
its signature neural cells.