Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem “Last Song for the Mend-It Shop” is a lament for lost places, an elegy for spaces of history and community that are erased in the name of development. Through four distinct sections, the poem intertwines themes of destruction, resistance, and nostalgia, capturing the quiet violence of urban renewal and the ways people mourn what is taken away. The tone shifts between grief, anger, and bitter irony, as the speaker navigates a world where old buildings, businesses, and histories are being wiped out, replaced by structures that feel empty and disposable.

The first section opens with a stark and violent image: “Today some buildings were blown up.” The language evokes not only the physical demolition of buildings but also a deeper emotional loss—these structures, once integral to the landscape, are reduced to rubble. The comparison to “rounded shoulders, the shoulders of women no one has touched for a long time” suggests neglect, abandonment, and the invisibility of certain lives, particularly those of women who are no longer seen or valued. The observation that “men and women watched from their offices then went back to filing papers” highlights the impersonal, bureaucratic acceptance of destruction—something that happens, is observed briefly, and then forgotten. Even a drinking fountain, something designed for public sustenance, “hummed” indifferently. The final lines of the section—“I translate this from the deep love / I feel for old buildings. / I translate this from my scream.”—reveal the speaker’s personal stake in this loss. The act of translation suggests that the pain of erasure must be articulated in some way, but the scream—raw, unfiltered emotion—remains at the core.

The second section focuses on a last effort to salvage something before demolition, centering on an act of quiet defiance: attempting to save the rosebushes before bulldozers arrive. The MEND-IT SHOP, once a place that promised repair and continuity, is now fading, its sign “fading fast now fading hard.” The urgency of its erasure mirrors the city’s relentless transformation. The roses, however, “held on so tightly / we could not get them out,” a powerful metaphor for resistance—both natural and human. The act of loosening dirt, “trespassing, trying to save,” becomes symbolic of the struggle to hold onto history, culture, and labor. The Mexican workers who once tended the plants “with such a gracious bending” are already gone, their absence another sign of displacement. Yet even in their absence, the roses refuse to let go, embodying a stubborn refusal to be erased. The final image—“We bit hard on the sweetness, / snipping, in all our names, / the last lavish orange heads, / our teeth pressed tightly together”—is a moment of collective grief and defiance. The biting down suggests both determination and helplessness, a desperate act of preservation in the face of inevitable loss.

The third section shifts in tone, adopting a bitter, sarcastic voice to critique the logic of unchecked development. “This looks like a good place / to build something ugly. Let’s do it.” The casual, dismissive attitude toward destruction highlights the way history is bulldozed for profit, convenience, and thoughtless expansion. The imagined conversation mocks the rapid erasure of meaningful places—whether it’s a “snack shop,” a parking lot, or a bank doomed to fail. The most devastating moment comes in the lines about an old theater: “That old theater nobody goes to anymore, who cares if it’s / the last theater like that / in the United States?” The dismissal of uniqueness, of cultural heritage, is chilling. The callousness continues—“Knock it out so we can build / a bank that goes bankrupt in two years. Don’t hang on.”—underscoring how quickly places with meaning are sacrificed for projects that are themselves transient, leaving behind an urban landscape devoid of character and history.

The final section deepens the poem’s elegiac tone, as the speaker acknowledges the weight of loss: “Some days I can’t lift / the glint of worry.” The phrase suggests that the burden of witnessing this ongoing destruction is something that cannot be put down. The lines “We go around together. / Soon we will wear / each other’s names” suggest a merging of identity with history, as if the speaker and the lost buildings, businesses, and memories are becoming one. The haunting image of “the river of lost shoes” suggests not just urban loss but a broader sense of displacement, recalling the many who have been forced out of spaces they once called home.

The poem closes with a heartbreaking moment—before the Honolulu Bakery is demolished, the women who worked there “lock arms on the counter.” This small act of solidarity and grief is deeply poignant. A customer buys their “last world-famous golden lemon cake,” but the speaker reminds us that the taste, the experience, the life of the place, is now permanently lost: “We will not know what / it tasted like.” This final realization underscores the true cost of erasure—it is not just the structures that disappear, but the textures, the flavors, the memories, the human connections that cannot be reconstructed once they are gone.

“Last Song for the Mend-It Shop” is a powerful meditation on destruction, preservation, and the futility of holding onto what a city refuses to keep. Through vivid imagery and a range of tones—from sorrowful to sarcastic to mournful—Naomi Shihab Nye captures the emotional impact of watching a familiar landscape disappear. The poem does not offer solutions, nor does it sentimentalize the past, but it insists on the necessity of remembering, of translating loss into language, even when the buildings, the people, and the stories are gone.

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