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...A LOVE LETTER by PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR THE GIRL OF ALL PERIODS; AN IDYLL by COVENTRY KERSEY DIGHTON PATMORE MY CREED by HOWARD ARNOLD WALTER ON THE RHINE by MATTHEW ARNOLD PERFECTED by LOUISA SARAH BEVINGTON THE DAWN OF EVENING by HARRY RANDOLPH BLYTHE |