Thursday, August 30, 2007

Today's Poem - Friday

I just realized the last three, and only three, poems of the day have all been New England poetresses, so I thought I should branch out for today's poem. Also thinking these are all poems I know and love, it would be nice to find a poem not only new to the girls but also new for me too. So I hunted around and found one I think will be perfect, DH Lawrence's Suburbs on a Hazy Day. It makes the suburbs sound like the boring cesspools they are, which is perfect because lately Molly has been campaigning that she wants to live in the 'burbs (because a lot of her friends have moved there and in her four-year-old world "the suburbs" are probably imagined as some purple-hued pony pastured magic playland) and this poem should paint the more relaistic cookie-cutter wastland which would await her there in reality.



Suburbs on a Hazy Day

O stiffly shapen houses that change not,
What conjuror’s cloth was thrown across you, and raised
To show you thus transfigured, changed,
Your stuff all gone, your menace almost rased?

Such resolute shapes, so harshly set
In hollow blocks and cubes deformed, and heaped
In void and null profusion, how is this?
In what strong aqua regia now are you steeped?


That you lose the brick-stuff out of you
And hover like a presentment, fading faint
And vanquished, evaporate away
To leave but only the merest possible taint!

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