Yet Most I Love Your Scars

San Francisco

By Maynard Dixon

(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!