Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ASPHALT AND CHROMIUM GLORY, by MARGARET LATHROP LAW


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ASPHALT AND CHROMIUM GLORY, by                    
First Line: Go, build your sky-scrapers higher and higher
Last Line: Beauty shall drape the mildewed bone.
Subject(s): Cities; Heaven; Life; Sky; Urban Life; Paradise


Go, build your sky-scrapers higher and higher,
Claw at the very face of heaven;
Blink the fate of Sidon and Tyre,
Holocaust of their final leaven --
Slave away and build and buy,
Rear possession into the sky.

Heap up welders, brick and steel,
Cage your children in honeycombed stories;
Dizzy their brains till senses reel.
Blazon asphalt and chromium glories.
Blot from your life the simple earth
Cradle of nomad fathers' birth.

Forget the fiddler of burning Rome,
Babylonian downfall trailing Phoenician.
Bats and worm have taken as home
Turkish altars Cambodian, Grecian.
Under the stars their fragments lie
Along with conquerors they perished by.

Rooted in dust and mold of each
Truth shall revive through a simple flower
When cities are skeletons left to bleach
Earth and only earth shall hold power.
Buds will shove through fallen stone,
Beauty shall drape the mildewed bone.





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