Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, MELBOURNE AND MEMORY: THE TOWERS AT EVENING, by FRANK WILMOT


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MELBOURNE AND MEMORY: THE TOWERS AT EVENING, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: The juggernauting trams and the prolonged
Last Line: A pearly lighthouse over its own hull-tearing crags!
Alternate Author Name(s): Maurice, Furnley
Subject(s): Melbourne, Australia


THE juggernauting trams and the prolonged
Crash of the Cafeterias at noon
Are silenced, and the ghostly clouds are thronged
With towers floating past a cloudy moon.

The buildings, in a faint, unearthly glow,
Tremble in sourceless light and melting shade;
They stir like blossomed wattle lifting slow
As a remembered wind moves down the glade.

Out of the years of chaffering, out of greed;
From crude material, in deep desire;
Out of some nameless, searching human need
Arose these towers for traders on the mire.

The golden haze, approaching like a wraith,
Transformed the domes into a living faith;
Stores became faery temples when complete,
And far too holy for men's sullied feet;
Translucent, magical, scarcely a part
Of life nor fruit of human hope or art.

Not from the stones or the mason's blue-print plan
These symbols of the spirit's vaster span!

Maybe the coral of the Barrier Reef,
In spite of time and thrashing storms and the filth of shags,
Could raise in blind compulsion, without knowledge or belief,
A pearly lighthouse over its own hull-tearing crags!





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