Property:Has text
From Off the Road Database
This is a property of type Text.
C
<div class="poem">
<p>You are useless. We live.<br />
We await great events.<br />
We are spread through this earth.<br />
We protect our strong race.<br />
You are useless.<br />
Your cell takes the place<br />
of our young future strength.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>And in these dark cells,<br />
packed street after street,<br />
souls live, hideous yet—<br />
O disfigured, defaced,<br />
with no trace of the beauty<br />
men once held so light.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>For alas,<br />
he had crowded the city so full<br />
that men could not grasp beauty,<br />
beauty was over them,<br />
through them, about them,<br />
no crevice unpacked with the honey,<br />
rare, measureless.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>That the maker of cities grew faint<br />
with the splendour of palaces,<br />
paused while the incense-flowers<br />
from the incense-trees<br />
dropped on the marble-walk,<br />
thought anew, fashioned this—<br />
street after street alike.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>So he built a new city,<br />
ah can we believe, not ironically<br />
but for new splendour<br />
constructed new people<br />
to lift through slow growth<br />
to a beauty unrivalled yet—<br />
and created new cells,<br />
hideous first, hideous now—<br />
spread larve across them,<br />
not honey but seething life.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>Is our task the less sweet<br />
that the larve still sleep in their cells?<br />
Or crawl out to attack our frail strength:
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>Though we wander about,<br />
find no honey of flowers in this waste,<br />
is our task the less sweet—<br />
who recall the old splendour,<br />
await the new beauty of cities?
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>Though they sleep or wake to torment<br />
and wish to displace our old cells—<br />
thin rare gold—<br />
that their larve grow fat—<br />
is our task the less sweet?
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>Crowded—can we believe,<br />
not in utter disgust,<br />
in ironical play—<br />
but the maker of cities grew faint<br />
with the beauty of temple<br />
and space before temple,<br />
arch upon perfect arch,<br />
of pillars and corridors that led out<br />
to strange court-yards and porches<br />
where sun-light stamped<br />
hyacinth-shadows<br />
black on the pavement.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>Is this what we want?<br />
Have so many generations lived and died for this?<br />
There have been Crusades, persecutions, wars, and majestic arts,<br />
There have been murders and passions and horrors since man was in the jungle...<br />
What was this blood-toll for?<br />
Just so that everybody could have a full belly and be well-mannered?
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>But let us not fool ourselves:<br />
This civilization is mostly varnish very thinly laid on...<br />
Take any newspaper any morning: scan through it...<br />
Rape, murder, villany, and picking and stealing:<br />
The mob that tore a negro to pieces, the men that ravished a young girl:<br />
The safe-blowing gang and the fat cowardly promoter who stole people’s savings...<br />
Just scan it through: this news of civilization...
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>Let us not be afraid of ourselves, but face ourselves and confess what we are:<br />
Let us go backward a while that we may go forward:<br />
This is an excellent age for insurrection, revolt, and the reddest of revolutions...
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>Civilization!<br />
Everybody kind and gentle, and men giving up<br />
their seats in the car for the women...<br />
What an ideal!<br />
How bracing!
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>Away then, with soft ideals:<br />
Brace yourself with bitterness:<br />
A drink of that biting liquor, the Truth...
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p><span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> Voices of dollars</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> And drops of blood</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> . . . . .</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> Voices of broken hearts,</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> . . Voices singing, singing,</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> . . Silver voices, singing,</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> Softer than the stars,</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> Softer than the mist.</span>
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>Now. . .<br />
. . Only stars and mist<br />
A lonely policeman,<br />
Two cabaret dancers,<br />
Stars and mist again,<br />
No more feet or wheels,<br />
No more dust and wagons.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>Dust of the feet<br />
And dust of the wheels,<br />
Wagons and people going,<br />
All day feet and wheels.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>The look of their clean white curtains was the same as the rim of a nun's bonnet.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>New neighbors came to the corner house at Congress and Green streets.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>Dust and the thundering trucks won—the barrages of the street wheels and the lawless wind took their way—was it five weeks or six the little mother, the new neighbors, battled and then took away the white prayers in the windows?
</p>
</div> +
