Out here sheer force of sky bearing down Could crush the town to dust and hand it back. So it lies low in cringing boxiness And draws back, as if it didn't know them, From its own absurdly wide streets, Which are stupid promises Where nothing lingers the wind would linger over. The steeple of the Episcopal church And the obsolete smokestack at Monolith Portland Insult the sunshot blue above the leveled town, The one a washed-out dream prosperity woke from, The other, in this whereabouts, a reflection in the sky Of the hard thorn in every citizen, His just belief That God is impressed above all by defiance. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...DOWNFALL OF POLAND [FALL OF WARSAW, 1794] by THOMAS CAMPBELL FREDERICK DOUGLASS by PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR WEARINESS by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW MAUDE CLARE by CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI ENVOY: 5. TO MY NAME-CHILD by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON BALLAD by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH THE CLOUDS: SONG [OR CHORUS] OF THE CLOUDS by ARISTOPHANES |