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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
CAPITAL SQUARE, by PATRICK JOHN MCALISTER ANDERSON Poet Analysis
First Line: Danger is silent in the bloodless square
Last Line: Harden and echo at a statue's voice.
Subject(s): Architecture & Architects; Statues
First Line: Danger is silent in the bloodless square
Last Line: Harden and echo at a statue's voice.
Subject(s): Architecture & Architects; Statues
Danger is silent in the bloodless square:
the boxing brute of stone half hides his fist,
the moon in the haunt of weight is a heavy ghost
and the sun is a toastmaster,
the punishing façades disguise their skill
and fountains play before the parliament of standstill.
You may go freely through the paved immense
slowness, the architectural snow;
admire the statues stiffened in the silence
with No upon their lips and the heart at zero,
until having made some circles you understand
you are a pigmy held in a stone hand.
No warmth is here, only an abstract good;
your dead shall never bleed nor your love return;
children ask here no gifts nor the hungry food. ...
but now and then four walls of added men
swing into symmetry, with a stone noise
harden and echo at a statue's voice.
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STATUETTE: LATE MINOAN by CECIL DAY LEWIS
THE STATUE OF A LIBERTINE by RON PADGETT
DESERT by PATRICK JOHN MCALISTER ANDERSON