The tobacco fields lie fallow, the migrant pickers
no longer visible, where undocumented intelligences
traveled on Earth they had no stake in.
Though the dark leaves growing beneath white veils
were beautiful, and the barns opened out
like fans, all this of course, could
have been done differently.
This valley itself, one more contradiction.
The paradise feels, the brute skyscrapers,
the pesticidal wells.
I have been wanting for years to write
a poem equal to these material forces,
and I have always failed.
I wasn't looking for a muse, only a reader
by whom I could not be mistaken.