Wedding Pictures

We have built a civilization of spectacle
Heralded by a fanfare of fragmentation.
Lo and Behold--
Baby Jesus cries over spilt milk
Harder than any martyr should.
The tourists weep with him
As if collective empathy is important
And not ideologically suspect.
Against what does the sun rise beside nighttime
And all its little indiscretions?
It has no cause,
No reason to remember.
The name is a placeholder, empty
On subways and at dinner parties,
In wedding pictures,
Among shopping lists for self-improvement,
Drawn in the margins.
In Gold we trust--a symptom
Of industrialized prophets
And appropriation of southern seas.
When it is no longer history,
The deception will lie in the footnotes
And fabricated stains will be the only trace.
Biographies of men are burned with the rest
And Roman buildings turn crepuscular
Like reality running too far down a linear street,
Where the church is surprisingly warm,
Until you realize:
It was the religion that was cold.
Sitting down to breakfast,
Everything seems in perfect accord
As generations sigh and disappear.