After Schopenhauer
by Frank De Canio
[ poetry - february 10 ]
The perceptible world's a stop-off point
for the Will before its homecoming.
Everyone's a tourist here in this huge
bazaar where metropolitan buses lumber
like circus elephants trumpeting trunks
filled with gas instead of air. Here, city clowns
perform economic juggling
acts, balancing budgets atop beams
that gird high-rise stories materializing
like sandcastles out of the river's mouth.
Such impressive spectacles to write home about
with beautified clichés before the tides
of time engulf receding shores.
Many leave their footprints trailing behind
ribbons of nucleic acid. In this vast amusement
park, most pay for short thrills, others get tickets
that seem to let them ride for free,
at least until the winter season.
Then the doors are shut for rich and poor
alike, the props dismantled and the tent
is folded till the harbingers of Spring.
