Blue-Tail Fly

The Scale of Empire

1 The Scale of Empire Yet the most distinctive, and perhaps the most impressive, characteristic of American scenery is its wildness. Thomas Cole, founder, Hudson River School The wood that engulfs an empire of stone cares only to maintain itself, to green again the decadent progressions—discovery, desperation. Our delusion: digging into the earth that submits only temporarily. Eventually, the vine creeps across the well-swept patio, up the walls, then through, under the iron rails. The overwrought towers bend to the runners thin as twine, and eventually stand only in memory as ruins even the rats won’t enter. Cut back the undergrowth, seize the molding dead below, snip the limbs just at the joint, the discarded apple will have its revenge in the rotting—feeding the hungry world that cracks the sidewalk, sating the birds that adapt to the landscape of cities as easily as a winged roach that nests in the paneling. 2 So let us go on— swatting the locusts that decimate the ordered fields—insisting upon graphs, the architecture of command and sequence. The ants have already mastered the soil. Small emperors of patience, they walk a bridge of dinosaur bones. ...