“Wall, that vile Wall which did these lovers sunder;
And through Wall’s chink, poor souls, they are content
To whisper. At the which let no man wonder.”

Act 5 Scene 1
Midsummer Night’s Dream

We are so content to whisper our discontent.
Make enemies across the wall
rather than lovers.
Friends,
we create others.

Looped around the wall,
Wholey, holey, holy

“Wall, that vile Wall.”

How walls define this time,
this ridiculous point in time in history where this resident would rather
build a wall
than cure a pandemic.

This Met Museum wall — this red brick, peek-through
by Zamora, called “Lattice Detour,”
Curvy wall,
Porous, poor us, pour us another.
Stuck as we have been in our homes and in our walls.

And another — what, metaphor? — ricocheting pinball in the brain,
“A map is not the territory.”
Magritte explained Korzybski,
“Perception always intercedes between reality and ourselves.”

The map to victory,
to a restoration of civility,
to bridges over walls,
is not the territory of voters — the majority of us yearning to be free of this moment,
behind the walls of this travesty.

No longer gathered in a crowd,
we, still, ARE the majority.
Right beside that wall.
Of which we cannot overleap
But we shall overcome.

We can peek through the latticework
The simple squares made, it seems, of hand and Mexican-American clay.
Red brick sturdy
To keep the house aloft and keep the
big bad wolf at bay.

Wall, that vile Wall.
You do not define the territory.
The territory is where we perceive it to be
Up on a roof of a grand museum
in a city they said was dead.
No fear
No fear
No fear, vile Wall.

For where you stoke enmity, we choose love.

We choose to look through and see another whom we call friend.

The exhibit is up until early December. And then the Wall comes down. #cantorroof The Met.