Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, MAIN STREET MUMBLES, by MARY SIEGRIST


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MAIN STREET MUMBLES, by                    
First Line: From out her heaven of heavens beauty looked
Last Line: And so main street forever mumbles on.
Subject(s): Beauty


From out her heaven of heavens Beauty looked
Upon the ugly glitter and the hopeless gaud;
"I will go down and live with them," she said,
"These deaf and blind, these starved, undreaming ones,
They shall, through love, learn to know loveliness,
I will incarnate in a poet's dream."
. . . . . . . .
Perplexed, dismayed, a poet walked the ways.
Silence lay on him like an unspent sea.
Nor could he hope to come articulate;
For song died ever on his opening lips.
"Your poets you would slay," he murmured low,
"I must go forth where there is room for dreams."
The wise ones touched their foreheads with a smile
And, fat-eyed, looked on him indulgently.

Out from her heaven of heavens Beauty looked.
"I will go down myself to them and be
Priestess to all the loveliness of life."
A while walked Beauty, veiled, their dusty ways
Seeking in vain to body forth her word
Speaking in unknown tongue to unlistening ones
Who mocked, or moved, incredulous, aside.
Sadly the goddess turned and went away.
Only a timid child clutched piteously
Her flying robe.
"Hovels shall yearn to me and all the dark
Sad places of the earth shall quicken with
My deeper flowering," she said,
"But Main Street shall be dark till not one stone
Is left upon another."

But Main Street's ears were stopped. She only flashed
More jauntily and more resplendently
Her foolish lights. She only shrieked
More hoarsely in her empty carnival.
"I am success. I am prosperity. . . .
No ghostly stuff of dreams is here!"
Her blatant drums beat out.
. . . . . . . .
And so Main Street forever mumbles on.





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