When the depths of our holes match the heights
of our spires, like some obscene parabola,
measuring the elastic proliferation

of desire; when its snaking ambition,
ozone to molten core, is magnificent to the eye —
this many nations wide, this many fathoms deep —
capacious enough to engulf oceans,

continents, small orbiting moons, and the egos
of real-estate autocrats and media tycoons,
twitchy-fingered xenophobic politicians,
Botox-ed queens of reality television;

when we’ve stumbled into this epiphany

of absence, made humanity a parable,

who will teeter at the slanting rim and marvel?