No graph can wrap around the whirling cone
that wrecked all word of town, from home to hall.
It took the sure and slammed it to the ground;
it took the known and flung it into shards.
Where have the vowels gone? No road or rail,
or company, or sense, or even gripes—
the gripes are flattened, dammit. Even things
we knew were gone sink farther into gone.
And we, who finger fast our handheld gods,
who ride the clouds of bland emergency,
who tap out mild affections, rushed laments,
then shoot our signals with imagined flare,
all close to nothing in the witless air,
we are the ones who sweep the land and run.