(second version)
Pushkin loved the idea of St. Petersburg
and the bronze horseman who saw
the city before it was built. Langston
Hughes loved the idea of Harlem,
also some people there. Did Baudelaire
love Paris? Splenetically, maybe.
I don't think Dickinson loved
any cities. The village of her mind
sufficed, urban in its way.
It pleases me to think
of all the poets writing now
in Istanbul and Mainz, Hong
Kong and Honolulu, Uppsala
and Houston, Brasilia and Berlin,
Tehran and Tangier and all
the other cities where poets
live--every city in other words,
in their words, which
follow their cities around,
no matter how often the
cities change disguises
or suffer horrors. Poets'
words attach themselves to love
and food, despair and dreams,
rage and work and filth and beauty.
If only these poets could meet
and read their poems and argue
but not fight, ask questions
about language and children,
mountains and rivers and trains.
Should we, then, build poetry consulates
in all these poem-filled cities?
Yes, yes we should.
and the bronze horseman who saw
the city before it was built. Langston
Hughes loved the idea of Harlem,
also some people there. Did Baudelaire
love Paris? Splenetically, maybe.
I don't think Dickinson loved
any cities. The village of her mind
sufficed, urban in its way.
It pleases me to think
of all the poets writing now
in Istanbul and Mainz, Hong
Kong and Honolulu, Uppsala
and Houston, Brasilia and Berlin,
Tehran and Tangier and all
the other cities where poets
live--every city in other words,
in their words, which
follow their cities around,
no matter how often the
cities change disguises
or suffer horrors. Poets'
words attach themselves to love
and food, despair and dreams,
rage and work and filth and beauty.
If only these poets could meet
and read their poems and argue
but not fight, ask questions
about language and children,
mountains and rivers and trains.
Should we, then, build poetry consulates
in all these poem-filled cities?
Yes, yes we should.
