Foreseeing the false posture may be admirable
but who will there be to admire it
if all that such self-policing cultivates
are explanatory legends whose map was never drawn?

Should we look forward then to a tomorrow
of vacation from punctilious demeanor,
to an unshaven embrace, a sloppy kiss,
a song we can count on being remembered?

Better perhaps to gain neutral ground,
adopting a lingua franca whose forthright cadences
rule out both distrust and trust,
a face never widely known.

Days pass in a proliferation of visas
as something insists on staying visible,
infiltrated into the dissimilar world
it had once shadowed at a different distance.