Friday, November 3, 2017

Yet Most I Love Your Scars


San Francisco
(1913)


I love the flowing sky-line of your hills,
Blue spaces that encircle you with dreams;
I love the rugged contour of your strength
That points the sky with pinnacles of steel;
Your jaunty men make confident with health,
Their care-free swagger and their careless jokes;
The laughing pretty girls upon your streets,
Keen-eyed and heedless of the dusty winds;
I love the stinging fog that gives them zest,
That wakes ambition in the blood and snaps
The sparkling thought from fact to prophecy;
I love your round wind-hammered hills of sand
When I can see the sun-gleam on remote
Tremendous weavings of the western main;
I love your tall gray buildings, garish-new;
Stark flat-faced monuments to Opulence:
Your naughty lights o’night, — your loud cafes;
The stream of strife and merriment that glows
With the blood of people unafraid to live;
But most of all I love your lingering scars:—
Occasional split curbs, — blank-ending steps, —
And grim chaotic gulfs of broken brick,
Where one fierce day the furnaces of Hell
Roared red with courage of a molten race
Remoulded amid shuddering Templors.
Out of those pits of pain now rise serene,—
Upbuilt of hope,— pure shafts of palaces,
White against azure, tipped with domes of Dream;
Yet most I love your scars, our battle ground
Of death and dust and triumph, you are Home!




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