Architectural despair and its discontents

Greek Surrealist poetry really doesn't have the viral resonance in the me-o-sphere one associates with hot political gossip or tetchy urbanist discourse, but here we have a confluence, a fragment of Surrealist Greek verse speaking quite directly to the urban landmarks activist set:

*

[...]

let us direct our gaze

to architectural despair

only the time has not come

- the time has not yet come -

[...]

*

This is excerpted from "Esto Memor" in Do Not Distract the Driver by Nikos Engonopoulos, translated by Nikos Stabakis, from his new anthology Surrealism in Greece. The image of despairing architecture, a "vanishing bakery," was lifted from Michael R. Allen, to whom this squib is dedicated.