New England pasture prepares for research seeding facility


Outside my workplace Building 20 is coming down.

Humongous yellow backhoes dance 
on tank treads shaking the street, 
scraping concrete floor from earth. 
This is a tough field for spring plowing. 

Massive steel teeth 
comb and scoop 
rubble into mounting piles. 

Mangled stringy rebar 
spring up in a frenzy, freed 
from embedment of cement beds. 

This little lot of MIT 
resembles, or may resemble, 
remnants of Belgrade. A little 
army of Guerette Corporation 
employs machinery manufactured 
by Komatsu. 
This is the celebrated lot 
in recent photographs, commemorates "our" successes. 
Many Nobel laureates worked here.  

Headline pressed against glass face 
of dispenser beside hard-hat fence: 
"We will bomb until we prevail"  

Radar and microwaves were born in Building 20. 
Building 20 sheltered the linguistics faculty. 
Radar research began before the second world war, 
in anticipation of same; Building 20 housed the agents of its fruition. 

Early airborne microwave mapping (to be used in search and bombing) 
took a picture of Cape Cod 
revealing the land's true shape for the first time in history. 

How find tanks cloaked under the mountain's canopy? 
Meticulous destruction ensures safety for the workers 
from asbestos and other toxins in the fabric of the structure. 
The frame came slowly down. Flatbeds 
cart away 8 x 8 beams stacked neatly for resale. 

Dead wires droop 
from the floors of a sliced wing 
and lamp fixtures remain on the ceiling. 

On the sidewalk is the season's first dead bee.