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...MIDSUMMER BIRDS by ROBERT FROST AGAINST THE REST OF THE YEAR by JAMES GALVIN HERO-WORSHIP; SONNET by AMY LOWELL AT THE ZOO IN SPAIN by CLARENCE MAJOR NOTHING WILL CURE THE SICK LION BUT TO EAT AN APE' by MARIANNE MOORE ELEGY: THE GHOST WHOSE LIPS WERE WARM; FOR GEOFFREY GORER by EDITH SITWELL |