Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, AH ... TO THE VILLAGES, by THOMAS MCGRATH


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

AH ... TO THE VILLAGES, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Leaving the splendid plaza and the esplanade
Last Line: And contentment is momentary in the villages
Subject(s): Towns; Villages


Leaving the splendid plaza and the esplanade --
The majestic facades of metropolitan unease --
Let us to the vast savannahs of despair
Repair; and let us seek
The panoramas of malaise, the continental anguish,
The hysteria and the nausea of the villages.

Somewhere -- perhaps where Omaha, like a disease,
And the magnificent, brumal names of Fargo, of Kalamazoo,
Infect the spirit with magnificent ennui --
A baroque splendor attends our small distress:
We dress in the grand extravaganza of cafard.

Still, there will come evenings without true discontent --
The sparrows loud in the dust and the crows gone cawing home
To the little wood; the lights ending at the prairie, and --
As the divine and healing night comes down --
The town reeling, unreasonably content.

In the one-horse town they have eaten the horse -- allons!
But soft! Here are not only the megrims of small forms
And the subliminal melancholy of the central square.
Take care; for here you find
An intermontane anguish in the wind that sings you home:
Here is a false front distinguished as your own.

And contentment is momentary in the villages.


Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA
98368-0271, www.cc.press.org




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