If this picture

was everything you knew about us
would you think the Earth was a place where every man
walked on water?
Maybe you'd gather we skim just above the surface, airy and light,
never breaching the exquisite tension of her taut miniscus -
the way physics tells us we touch, without touching.

If that story can be told at all,
only from a photograph.



Do you find here, people divided by wrought iron and
veiled from clear sight by the light cotton of fogs?
Or does it seem that each is given his turn
in the center of a great dance
while the rest look on, attentions undivided and waiting
for him to release into the same arabesque papered on the walls,
as promised.

photo by Henri Cartier-Bresson