Standing beneath Queensboro Plaza’s
tangled mass of tracks,
I can’t even imagine
the scaffolding
the monstrous cranes it would take
to sort this back

But then I underestimate—
underestimate you and the vastness
of secret night construction sites.
Behind the boarded fence,
the ground already torn
two stories deep
the clawed machines
diligent in the flood light

Perhaps I should not take offense
when these are only public works
impersonal labors
exempt from a past
just as the N train that
shudders into station is no
vehicle of remembrance—
watched and waited for but still
nothing more than a route
without any claim
to what it has passed.