A CITY FROM THE HILLS
There lies our city folded in the mist
Like a great meadow in an early morn
Flinging her spears of grass up through white films,
Each with its thousand, thousand tinted globes
Above us such an air as poets dream
The clean and vast wing-winnowed clime of Heaven.
Each of her streets is closed with shining Alps,
Like Heaven at the end of long plain lives.
WHAT NOW UNFOLDS
The city lies stripped to tightening skin
Still-born in the meadow’s dark recess
Ridging her bones among the shifting leaves
Stark-misted eyes glaze with the birth undone.
Above us such despair as nightmares bring
The empty plains sing siren-chimes of hell.
Her carers’ life-long husbandry for nought
A weeping outline left to stain the Fall.
[First stanza from Arnold Wall, 1900]
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