where Babylon ends

you gesture
blindly to the sky
my eye
following lazily

and declare
"why should i care?"
voice rising flamboyantly
"this means nothing to me
nothing to me"

i watch the wave flume
wash over the listening shoreline
gulls hanging in the air
(never ones to despair
or much to care)
choose not to observe
your arm's final elegant curve
and depart

Babylon ends
where?
here?
now?

"i'm not a child
no longer a child"

so simply
so simple
so easily said

and you put aside your childish things
an end to playgrounds
roundabouts and swings
all discarded
and wasting with the dead
and you no longer know
or understand
where
or why or how
Babylon ends

childhood's end