Bad Modernism: The White City

When the rotor hums for a long time
among the gawkers
I fall into a ghost trance
and become a white man again,
nothing must penetrate this history
because nothing can be distinguished
from itself, down
on Midway Plaisance, amidst the lights,
the dark beauties offer darkness, the eyes
go there while the will stands still,
in the Hall of Dynamos
the dead warriors will return
in a language no one remembers,
they have a stall in the Pavilion of Silence,
the ears go there
searching for treaties, tales of the elders,
from up here
the land is all parcels
like one of the new paintings,
nothing penetrates this illusion, prose
covers the brown earth
and in the hum of its scroll
can be heard a crowd of the visitors
clamoring at the entrance
with their tickets
to the white city.