Why should I care
whether automobiles carry dead drivers
off the empty highway into the forest?

Should it bother me
if influential briefcases
no longer swing
through the canyons?

Or empty suits forget
how to climb the stone stairs
of the courthouse? Should I feel sad
when the giant steel cages
hold only the bones of men?

I’d love to watch
skyscrapers collapse from within,
each floor heavy with the years,
windows widening to let the wind
blow the important pages away
like so many lies.

Shouldn’t we rejoice
when great ocean liners no longer
plow the plastic sea to unhappy islands
but lie in the coral dark, mollusks
building calcium palaces on their hulls?

God who once loved us
no longer requires our praise,
delighting Himself alone
with the meadowlark.

A crow lifts an unseemly voice to heaven,
and a nightjar flies over the ruined houses
carrying a soul, passing it
from one bird to the next,
never content with its song.
 
Note: Nightjar refers to a large family of nocturnal insect-eating birds sometimes called nighthawks. 
The name nightjar reflects the European folk-belief that the birds suckle goats by night, causing them to 
cease giving milk. The American whip-poor-will, a species of nightjar, is said to have the ability to sense 
a soul departing and can capture it as it flees.