The ragged children are gathering
along the shore, trampling the ramparts
of Metropolis back to amorphous sand;
towers and tunnels, the Civic Center,

the College of Knowledge, the Museum
of Unnatural History are crumbling
under their delicate, sea-shell-pink feet.
Even a hundred yards underground

dust trickles through cracks in the vault,
settling like a fine frost on the cropped
head of Adèle, Adèle who poses
in a steel cage of spotlight beams,

her leather shirt open to her navel,
her lifelike eyes glistening darkly
through the slits of her Lone-Ranger mask.
The music shrinks to a single scream.

And on the dance floor the grey dancers
crowd, dead-eyed, speechless, the plaster
flaking from their fashionably naked heads.
The baroque cloudscape of the ceiling

sags, and Adèle, rakishly chic, boyish
in her pearly skin, puckers her lips
at Rome, Rome become a billion tons of sand.
The children yell with joy. And all falls down.