Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE MIGRATION OF CITIES, by THOMAS MCGRATH


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE MIGRATION OF CITIES, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: We love paris
Last Line: Ports where the red flag has secretly flown for years.
Subject(s): Chicago; Cities; Communism; Florence, Italy; Paris, France; Socialism; Urban Life


We love Paris:
The domes of garlic and Gauloises
(where the surrealist poets are buried)
Rising over the boulevards of hexameters . . .
And the Parisian girls, ambassadors of perfume,
Sauntering . . . clothed only in moonlight and nostalgia.
-- Mythic city, capitol of revolutionary longing.

The spectral barricades, built from the blood of the Commune,
Which remains forever . . . and the red flag of roses and manifestoes
Streaming in a wind of bureaucratic sulphur . . .
We read the news in the lightning from cemeteries:
Starshine reflected from the bones of martyrs.

And we love Florence:
Where the cypresses of Fiesole whisper the name of Laura,
And the bad-tempered poet: Florentine by birth but not
By politics or much of anything else but language
Haunts the square where little David takes on the world
And all the marble of darkness lies enslumbered in cthonic tombs.

And further:
Because the Arno pussyfoots toward the sea
Under its clotheslines of bridges hung with the quaint decay
Of cages where commerce lived its bright and blighted
Infancy and all was for sale: Popes by the yard or the pound.
And because Florence is a gate to the cities of the Red north!

And we love Chicago:
Though it hog butchers the world --
Or as much as New York leaves it. And we love
The dense cities of Asia with their auras of inscrutable pain;
And of the Mid-East the cities of lace and blood
(Each city lifting above itself its former selves:
Istanbul, Constantinople, Byzantium
Vaporizing into the irrational Islamic skies
Blue . . .
dervishes . . .
Koranic agonies . . .
kismet.

And we love the cities of the south with their moonise of gunfire:
Managua . . . heart city . . . horizon of hope --
Madrid of the South "as of this writing" while the world outside my window
Goes by in its idiot clothes, seeking a warmer climate . . .
Tegucigalpa, Guadalajara, Isla Negra
Pah-gotzin-kay, Ciudad Nino Perdido
Salvador Salvador Salvador Salvador Salvador . . .

And I love even little forgotten Pueblo
(In Colorado) for I saw it once: "shining between earth and heaven,"
As the Companeros and I rode out on a slow freight --
Behind a locomotive powered by tequila and chilis --
Toward nowhere: besotted by wild hope and tortillas.

And still I see the places and the great cities we love
(Landlocked though they may be) sailing out
On the heart-stopping sea toward the Revolutionary Country.
All we need do is cut the anchor chains,
Burn all the contracts and polluted cargo,
Set the captain and owner adrift on a raft,
Shake up the crew and the menu --
And then, the beautiful cities, proudly, under full sail,
Will arrive at the ports which have waited for them so long:
Ports where the Red flag has secretly flown for years.


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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