Panopticon

So again this vista is eroding.
The buildings dim. The women doze in their
Steel and stone barns, their toil
Having been state approved, the sheets
Bleached harmless and stacked on the tables
By numbers, as the lambent stars emerge.
This is the desolation of
Similitude and recurrence.
And the ones not yet hardened
Sometimes nod in passing, with
Their eyes averted as in deference,
And the tree-bedded crows,
Ebon, latrant, mocking,
“Again!” Always again it begins.
And the years
Seep out of the wind.