Poetry for Walking the Landscape

Walking the Landscape (1990)

By Neal Bowers

Think of civilization as a wall,

of history as graffiti.

Starting with the innocent pornography

of Eden, we can sketch it all

in chiseled stone, in chalk, in berry stains,

or omit the darker parts to paint

only lovers bunched like flowers, faint

along the fractured blocks but luminous.

We can let the tumbled sections stand for war,

the brilliant landscape showing through

the gaps and shattered mortar with a view

that rivals heaven but as near

as breath or touch, through only hearts can move

through such terrain precipitous as love.