Square (5.01)

They labored for years towards the construction of what would be a new square.
They laid the tiles down in a precise geometry, perfect as practiced scales, no improvisations.
They rolled in stone on rasping machines. They carved the shadows into it
With drills that cried the abrasive, meticulous song of creating.
A worker lost a finger from carelessness; they lost an hour
washing the blood off the granite. The benches were a last touch, riveted to the ground

in a perpetual state of waiting. The minute the ropes were removed, the citizens, neglected
in the plans but expected, came pouring haphazardly in holding hands,
swinging newspapers, carrying umbrellas in the rain.
The sun set over the city, faces leaned together in low sweet whispers, peach colors fell
quietly in their smoothly cut beds of stone, as if the square had no memory

Of its exact and noisy conception. Only occasionally did a kiss miss its lips and teeth clank
together. In a few months the wearing down of particular diagonals became ever so minutely
visible: the mass of the thing swallowed unceremoniously into routines.
Off in a cathedral somewhere, costly restorations were underway. A worker cut
at slightly inexact angles, still learning an odd balance of the instruments in his new hand.