Immediately to one more, facing off to the west.
Having gained the last height there, I turned toward the setting
Sun, behind the pairs of towers that guard the rim
Of the visible-the modernistic CENTURY, the stubby MAJESTIC,
And gold-painted SAN REMO, and uptown at the edge of vision,
EL DORADO's pinnacles springing
Skyward, - then penetrate the great blue open room
Where all the sunsets burn; downward they disappear
In unseen chambers of bedrock; outward, already ruins
Of a wild, recent time, evoking all their fearful
Doubles in Moscow; branchless stumps ringing a clearing
In irony'Sforest. But inward, they glow in the dying sun
To cauterize the minds that make them matter and give
Them meaning : all the sad, ugly towers, mortared with mud,
Moribund, crumbling into dust.
Even at dawn, even at fairer moments than these
Glimpses out at the boundaries of all this ruined garden
Reveal a city to be achieved, the towers unreal,
The glittering windows unapproachable, the far
Finials and fretwork lifted almost
to
the stars
Beyond even their own vulgarity, beyond
The gestures of aspiration that left them scattered, sparkling
At all the irrational hours, hung high, but yet unpromised
There where only the eye can follow.
Once even at the false sunset inside the plated dome
Of the Planetarium, when night falls far too soon,
The bungled silhouetted mockups of all those
Surrounding towers, unbelievable and crude,
Taught me to watch the slower vanishings at the true
Rim of the park at dusk. At dusk in our present
time,
Too, we learn of our sick condition: the senseless, the cruel,
The angry and the deprived roam through the lack of light,
Smashing the benefits long denied them.
So frowning violence reassumes the crowded land,
And silently, as afternoon unfolds its shades,
Boys with corrupted terriers wander among the Ramble's
Winding and convoluted walks. In the terminating
Spring's convulsive heat, shouts drift up, then fade
Over the nearby water, and even to have remembered
