Sitting on a Half-Demolished Stone Wall

Here I am on a hilltop

In the center of Jerusalem,

Vacant for no discernible reason.

My mongrel is roaming free –

No cars here to kill him,

Plenty of things to sniff at.

Trivial questions distract me.

I don’t even know what kind of building

This wall once belonged to.

What am I trying to capture or figure out?

There might have been a message once, but

I was young, and the young

Don’t know how to listen. They only hear

Words they’ve already said to themselves.

So I probably got the message wrong

Or misremember: Maybe no one told me,

“Life is supposed to be fun.”

Now I think they were saying:

"Life isn’t supposed to be anything

Specific, just what it turns out to be."