Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, DOOMED BRIGHT CITY, by MARGERY SWETT MANSFIELD


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

DOOMED BRIGHT CITY, by                    
First Line: Remembering I had sold the sight
Last Line: No epitaph is needed for the race.
Subject(s): Apples; Cities; Flowers; Fruit; Urban Life


Remembering I had sold the sight
Of apples button-barnacling a bough,
Sun of my head, the toe's delight
In tufted moss, where the dark maples grow;
I marvelled at the maniac need
To bathe in the mind's peculiar fire,
Raising pinnacles of dreams
Old to Babylon and Tyre.

More fool! (I said) to sell the eternal sky,
Parading clouds and roping night with stars --
A pageantry enough for any eye
Still uncorrupted by our poisoned flowers.
Your fathers did not bother to record
What it was that they considered higher
Than one thing or another, left no word
And sought no city tapered to a spire.

They knew their kind remains forever more.
Only the doomed bright city needs the pen
And tablets to be excavated when
The curious come to ask what went before.
Of disappearing marvels, mark the place --
No epitaph is needed for the race.





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