Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, DAWN SONG, by THOMAS MCGRATH


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

DAWN SONG, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: The city lifts toward heaven from the continent of sleep
Last Line: And the footsteps of early workers are building the streets to the river
Subject(s): Cities; Dawn; Urban Life; Sunrise


The city lifts toward heaven from the continent of sleep
This skin of bricks,
these wounds,
this soul of smoke and anguish,
These walls held up by hope and want, these right angles
Stony, where the familiar and the strange are joined:
tangential
Marriages.
Imprisoned in the tall towers time kindles a ringing
Of iron bells
Iron round
bronze round
Resounding gongs clang in the nineteen tongues of the town
And the burnished sounds of the hours of dawn downsail and sing
Into the shadowy strees . . .
nightwater
timesbourne . . .
Where we
Daily are borne, and dally our days along and sadly and gayly
Light up our candles in search of our hourly bread.

And now, putting off its suit of lights, its electric mythologies,
The platonic city floats up out of the dark:
insubstantial
Structures, framework of dream and nightmare, a honeyed static
Incorporeal which the light condenses. A thin dust,
The fictions of time and custom, is clothing its mineral bones;

Out of the vapors of rent and habit the walls regain
Their untransparent strength; an ectoplasm of sweat and money
Crystallizes into roofs and docks; the bells collect
Around their bronze and song the cages of shimmering towers
And the footsteps of early workers are building the streets to the river.


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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