City with Its Back Turned

The city does not look at me, it turns on me the broad back of its cranes and goes on hauling what nobody asked for.

At the traffic lights people learn to wait without praying, each one with their hurry folded in a pocket.

There is a man who has swept the same corner since before I had a name. He sweeps the light, he sweeps the hours, he leaves the asphalt clean of future.

I walk against the wind of the cars and count the lit-up windows: each one is someone who cannot sleep either and who makes of their insomnia a small domestic star.

The city does not look at me, but it holds me up the way you hold up whatever no longer asks why it is still standing.