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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
GRAND ARMY PLAZA, by KAREN SWENSON Poet's Biography First Line: 10:00 at night in brooklyn Last Line: Where the sky salts a wither of grass. Subject(s): Architecture & Architects; Brooklyn, New York | |||
10:00 at night in Brooklyn. 10:00 at the Plaza of the Grand Army. The hills of the Plaza lie salted in snow, the barren trees reach from lamp to lamp around the circle of apartment houses swatched with lights, and at the far end, the arch under searchlights shines its mouth of neither entrance nor exit against the nighted trees at the beginning of Prospect Park. The arch of the Grand Army, an imitation of the Washington Square Arch, an imitation of the Arc de Triomphe, imitation of the Arch of Trajan, which imitates an infinite number of victorious openings; and if you set them up in your imagination, a series of croquet hoops reaching back to Adam and Eve, who stand joined by epaulets of snow in the fountain at the middle of the Plaza, they are an arcade of ages with Victory in her chariot grassed greener than graves by the rain always rearing her bitted horses at the top. In the bereavement of belief more real than their lives, they died for Grant's bronze uptown tomb, for Lincoln's marble throne - in armor and anger, for flags and faces they died - for the Invalides' concrete courtyard of glory, for the Colosseum's ancient malocclused bite against a bright sky. Snow seasons the bulldozed man-made hills at the Plaza of the Grand Army and beyond no searchlight condones the trees in Prospect Park, where the sky salts a wither of grass. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...MEDITATION ON THE BMT by PAUL BLACKBURN THE HYACINTH GARDEN IN BROOKLYN by HAYDEN CARRUTH CROSSING BROOKLYN FERRY by WALT WHITMAN THE CENTENARIAN'S STORY by WALT WHITMAN TO A PORTRAIT OF WHISTLER IN THE BROOKLYN ART MUSEUM by ELEANOR ROGERS COX MEDITATION ON THE BMT by PAUL BLACKBURN ROMARE BEARDEN RETROSPECTIVE AT THE BROOKLYN MUSEUM by CORNELIUS ROBERT EADY BROOKLYN BOUND by BARBARA ELOVIC BROOKLYN 1948 THE MARINE PARKWAY BRIDGE by MYRON ERNST |
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