for Anna
It would be different
if time didn’t pass
under these plaster wreathes
and classical balconies. It would be feasible
to say I am therefore
I think, if architecture held
an incomprehensibility. Matter
wouldn’t matter to me if
I’m not to be determined
by mortality. Maybe it’s solely
in the lover’s eyes
that time stops
being a horror, maybe love
is what we call
calm, happy expiration
of our flimsy materiality, if, say, in a city
buildings weren’t erected to be
venerated or knocked down
our basic shelters
transformed by the numinous of memory
into homes
that revert back to being
bricks, mortar and wood
just like us, when, unloved
as opposed to non-living
we become bodies, flesh, and dead.
Ali Alizadeh's forthcoming collection of poems, Towards the End, will be published by Giramondo in 2019. He is a Senior Lecturer at Monash University.