There are certainly people
living in fantastic cities
there, behind the mountains

Houses piled up
towers sevenfold
in the river, unworldly

rich with gold
which even upstream
silts upon the stones

where butterflies find flower pots
block after block, and leaves
for the caterpillars, their colours

a wonderful pattern
a familiar mystery
which the oracle does not explain

It is everywhere
if ever it should be lost
in the city of floods

and subsiding quays, which
in their collapse, can take none
of the wonders