City Poems
The Mayor Of Gary
by Carl Sandburg
I asked the mayor of Gary about the 12-hour day and the 7-day week.
And the mayor of Gary answered more workmen steal time on the job in Gary than any other place in the United States.
"Go into the plants and you will see men sitting around doing nothing--machinery does everything," said the mayor of Gary when I asked him about the 12-hour day and the 7-day week.
And he wore cool cream pants, the Mayor of Gary, and white shoes, and a barber had fixed him up with a shampoo and a shave and he was east and imperturbable though the government weather bureau thermometer said 96 and children were soaking their heads at bubbling fountains on the street corners.
And I said good-bye to the Mayor of Gary and I went out from the city hall and turned the corner into Broadway.
And I saw workmen wearing leather shoes scruffed with fire and cinders, and pitted with little holes from running molten steel,
And some had bunches of specialized muscles around their shoulder blades hard as pig iron, muscles of their forearms were sheet steel and they looked to me like men who had been somewhere.
The City In Which I Loved You
by Li-Young Lee
And when, in the city in which I love you,
even my most excellent song goes unanswered,
andI mount the scabbed streets,
the long shouts of avenues,
and tunnel sunken night in search of you...
That I negotiate fog, bituminous
rain rining like teeth into the beggar's tin,
or two men jackaling a third in some alley
weirdly lit by a couch on fire, that I
......
Without You
by Adrian Henri
Without you every morning would feel like going back to work after a holiday,
Without you I couldn't stand the smell of the East Lancs Road,
Without you ghost ferries would cross the Mersey manned by skeleton crews,
Without you I'd probably feel happy and have more money and time and nothing to do with it,
Without you I'd have to leave my stillborn poems on other people's doorsteps, wrapped in brown paper,
Without you there'd never be sauce to put on sausage butties,
Without you plastic flowers in shop windows would just be plastic flowers in shop windows,
Without you I'd spend my summers picking morosley over the remains of train crashes,
Without you white birds would wrench themselves free from my paintings and fly off dripping blood into the night,
Without you green apples wouldn't taste greener,
......
The City Planners
by Margaret Atwood
Cruising these residential Sunday
streets in dry August sunlight:
what offends us is
the sanities:
the houses in pedantic rows, the planted
sanitary trees, assert
levelness of surface like a rebuke
to the dent in our car door.
No shouting here, or
shatter of glass; nothing more abrupt
......
Past Carin'
by Henry Lawson
Now up and down the siding brown
The great black crows are flyin',
And down below the spur, I know,
Another 'milker's' dyin';
The crops have withered from the ground,
The tank's clay bed is glarin',
But from my heart no tear nor sound,
For I have gone past carin' --
Past worryin' or carin',
Past feelin' aught or carin';
......
The Narrow Streets
by Evelyn Judy Buehler
They wend their way through Sunshine City
Cobblestoned, sloped, and Old World pretty;
And lined with colorful, homes in glad unity,
Streets linked heart to heart, in deep affinity.
Up one crooked path, and down to the river,
As rosy birds sing in green trees that quiver;
And soon arises pearl moon, a glowing sliver,
Making the roads to everywhere a bit clearer.
This City
by Arthur Fox
This city is not as it seems
With bright lights it startles
It deceives the hopes of many
This city does not Forgive
It is the struggle of life
Dressed up in all the throes of civilisation
The history weighs heavy in this place
And all that have come before
......
The Slick City Streets
by Evelyn Judy Buehler
Recent rain has fallen on the slick city streets,
And redbird has suddenly abandoned the fast life!
Downtown still throbs with the city's heartbeats,
Like vast fields, in the time of red butterflies.
Varicolored and ever-changing, as untamed nature,
In its endless movement, charm, sights and sounds,
As sleek cars whiz past, carrying a hint of danger,
In a merry watery world, which vibrancy surrounds.
Sunset Downtown
by Evelyn Judy Buehler
high-rises touch sunset skies
and are bathed in many hues
fast cars bright lights raucous noise
eclectic beauty
frowns and smiles people laughing
on the way to a new day
in the now vivid fashions
sophisticated
......
Chesslike City, Tehran
by Rosa Jamali
Chesslike City, Tehran
A poem by Rosa Jamali
Translated from original Persian to English by the author
You see the city in my veins fast asleep
Like the obscure web over my brain
As if destroyed the fragments of my memory.
In the morning things were perfect
Just a watchdog which is penetrating incessantly into the eyelids
......
