Fire in the Architectural Institute

Fire in the Architectural Institute!
through all the rooms and over the blueprints
like an amnesty through the jails. . . .
Fire! Fire!

High on the sleepy facade
shamelessly, mischievously,
like a red-assed baboon
a window skitters.

We’d already written our theses,
the time had come for us to defend them.
They’re crackling away in a sealed cupboard:
all those bad reports on me!

The drafting paper is wounded,
it’s a red fall of leaves;
my drawing boards are burning,
whole cities are burning.

Five summers and five winters shoot up in flames
like a jar of kerosene.
Karen, my pet,
Oi! we’re on fire!

Farewell, architecture:
it’s down to a cinder
for all those cow sheds decorated with cupids
and those “rec halls” in rococo!

O youth, phoenix, ninny,
your dissertation is hot stuff,
flirting its little red skirt now,
flaunting its little red tongue.

Farewell, life in the sticks!
Life is a series of burned-out sites.
Nobody escapes the bonfire:
if you live — you burn.

But tomorrow, out of these ashes,
more poisonous than a bee
your compass point will dart
to sting you in the finger.

Everything’s gone up in smoke,
and there’s no end of people sighing.
It’s the end?
It’s only the beginning.
Let’s go to the movies!