Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SIEGE by KILE CROOK

First Line: TIMES SQUARE IS STONE AND BRONZE AND GLAZE
Last Line: WHAT WERE THE STREETS OF BABYLON.)
Subject(s): TIMES SQUARE, NEW YORK;
Times Square is stone and bronze and glaze
And wheels on asphalt and a blaze
Of light where unseen pappi drift. . . .
Twin sumachs, finding lodgment, lift
A brick on Christopher Street. . . .

The phlox
Has withered in your window box
But through a crack in the court cement
A grass blade, meek and violent,
Lifts up pale green, sinks firm roots down. . . .
Relentless siege is on the town.
The prying surge against your piers
Floats bulbs and burrs and vital spears
Of rooted reeds. . . .

The long attack
Will loose those rivets, will win back
Pre-empted soil, the smothered ground;
The steel-clinched clay shall be unbound.

(I know a still, New England wood
Where once a thrifty hamlet stood;
Where oaks and thickening maples stand.)
Concrete your shores and sheath your land
But still the acorn shall be peril
To all your towers, steel and sterile.
Build firmly!

(Vines are matted on
What were the streets of Babylon.)



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