We loved your lime-stained lecturns -- The trestles leaping high, The slogan of your derricks To underpin the sky. A planet held the plumb-line And fooled us from afar, But we went marching upward -- The perpendicular. We still resent the moment We heard a buttress gape, The scaling ladders calling To hasten our escape. Your towers turned to torrents, Your walls waved like a fan. We threw away the sheepskins And for the slide poles ran. The moon is meditative, Morose the Milky Way To see the trestles crumpled, The derricks in decay. And yet the horizontal Bequeatheth naught of shame, For other campaniles We chant the builders' fame. With grace we give to Gizeh Another thousand tiers; Who tilts the Wall of China May make up our arrears. But we, the chastened, seek not To overcrowd the skies; We kneel beside the fires And watch the halos rise. |