How do I love thee,
let me count the ways:
Like you I'm shmatta-made,
both dad and grandad were in the bizness,
and so, you might say,
is our beloved Montreal,
woven together
immigrant communities
who built an industry
of cutters, sewers
and salesmen and in turn,
was built by it.
But you,
you took it to a whole other level,
your Kevlar fabric
was 'space-age' in '76,
the retractable design
a marvel of modern engineering,
a roof that folds up
into the armpit of a tower hunched
over the stadium's bowl
like a vomiting drunk after a bender.
A roof
that lifts away on massive cables
to play Expos' games
under blue sky and sunshine,
and parachutes down for cover in rain,
you held so much promise,
like the team that might have won it all
but like you
could never make it all the way
to the top.
We feel your pain,
a slow suffering demise of 16,000 tears
(sad, but who's counting),
somehow you could not bear
the weight of snow
3 cms in a city that averages over 200
every winter
(but who's counting);
as if from day one
you were designed to fail,
or belonged to another city
south of the border
where the snowbirds migrate,
or maybe an imagined metropolis
of a climate-changed future.
Florence's 586-year old Duomo
hasn't been fixed as often as you,
or cost as much,
and you're only 35
(but who's counting).
This morning I woke to radio news
that the 2017 plan
to make you unretractable
at a cost of $250 million
(1/4 of a billion dollars, but who`s counting)
has been delayed (again)
with no end date in sight -
'unretractable' is a good word for you.
We're too invested
to cut our losses now,
we're overly-attached,
our love is blind
beyond all reason,
and will make us pay
over and over
until it's truly over.
