The first wall was a mountain
or a river depending on your view,
the arteries of the world carving
out caverns and pushing up shoulders
and fists, seismic collisions with other tribes.
The last wall was a divorce, a chasm
between planets with no air to breathe,
no vessel to span the division of family.
The first wall was greed or envy, original
sins, hatred of hue, hunger to possess.
The last wall is a sermon to keep out
monsters, a metropolis with fingers
poking clouds, a belief that God
is a mason. The first and last wall
is impossible to tell apart, people
yearning for ripe fields and verdant
lovers, continents shifting in past
and future tenses, neighbors forming
their fears into parapets. The only walls
that matter are the ones you know will
crumble, the endless ruins of castles
and clans, the way all things end when
you build mausoleums for the living.