What Babylon Was Built About

Is this the age of the machine

must every line ring with mechanical precision

the cool whir of the dynamo

This is an age of the mind

a mechanical mind stark in the face of dreams

undone where consciousness recedes

fear grasps where calculations fail

Must I write a poetry of the mind

of a stark mechanical mind

must red mean a reign of terror

black the Gestapo hand

My mind is not a mechanical mind

my precision is only the heart's precision

Let them break their hard metaphors

on the sharp fragments I sew

let the dream trickle to the steel heart

and break its flow

Calculation has failed

no dream can flower in their frozen field

the mind is the jungle the heart gave birth in