Mulligan

There are echos in the hallways
papers flutter as the wind at 36 stories
passes through the jagged windows
whistling through the gutted cubes

Old Anansi spins upon the leather power chair
the mid morning sun sparkling on the picture frames
he left them, the chair's former occupant
he went out the fast way

And in the trees near his landing
there's the creak of the ropes
dry as the men they suspend
above the grassy paving cracks

One patent leather shoe slips from the decaying foot
of a former financial advisor, now scarecrow
startling the feeding ravens, who fly out
out of the necropolis, into the sun

Out, over the empty fields, the fading houses
over the billowing tents, mismatched and cobbled
from old air bags, pool covers, and more lately
skins of the dying cows, too tame to survive

She scrapes the fat from the skin with Discover
she can't read the word, but the card lasts forever
and there's dozens more, imprinted with strange names
last epitaphs of the fallen suburbanites

She stops, listening as the baby stirs, silent,
then murmuring, as the child twitches back into slumber
"It's goan be arite, baby baby, goan be fine
Cause we'll build it all again, baby, light it all again."

And the baby, snoring beneath the soaring raven
warmed by the burning pages of illegible knowledge
carries the seeds of the unseen millions, who shall
seek, and strive, and destroy it all again.