The City

I walked in sadness along the way
Of a great city and heard the venture calling
That is buried now in stone; the boxed
Victory of mortar lies spread beneath the grey
Waves of symmetry that have no heart nor stirring
Of the good things. Where are they now?

I listed to the vengeance stealthy
The mutter of the angry mob that's seen the glory
Of a rich man's dream and clutched the wealthy.
Spin of coins; the sullen men now robbed
Of making, lost amidst the jungle tubes of steel
And arid clamour of the tracks. Whence do they lead?

They lead into the night when the last lights out
And the last drunks gone to his lonely room.
City tracks in the misty rain muddied with the rout
Of the day's out-pourings; while the poor decrepitude
Of nature drips from the remnant tree
And the ghost of life is a starveling feline thing.

Do we love the dead stones when the night has come?
Splashing the cold light of the myriad globes
Into a moving discontent that runs and runs
Until it dies with the lusted dawn and the sun
A blotched robe of rent-cloth spreads
Faint and wan across the sky.

No neither love nor hate nor a plenitude
Of dreams can fill the flow of piled stones,
This market place of men, this greedy, futile mood
That sprawls upon the good land and lets it rot
In dusty silence; this great sham of beauty
Of the good things, for they are gone.

—A.A.N.