The city leaning at dusk like the woman I see
resting on the rust of brick her two hands rinsed
in kitchen water When I cross Adams in a car,
climbing the street names that age where the valley
ages: Jefferson, Madison, Monroe; long past Lincoln
misplaced: bound to keep the municipal Grant
from the immigrant Wall; across the valley rising
like a bowl two hands make that still holds the lake
that gave it form: benches where the water receded,
primitive shorelines, the electoral road. Where it ends
our names go out; the sheer rock knots into a face,
mouthless, without tongue, like the nameless to us
who first brought her young to the shore, looked
down into the water, shapeless: city without form.