CRAZY SQUARE
How sweet the puddle of daunting courage
I cross. The twist of motion, the delicious
time, the splash of mirrored water along
the feet and legs. A certain trefoil of green,
with light in a certain blue, shimmers along
the land : passers-by, derelicts, squatters.
The entire small world turns. It is nothing
I've ever seen before. This statuary of
existence, every stroke and dot, is played
out before me as in a sculpture'd garden.
-
Philadelphia has its lazy streets.
I am standing near the wall along
Christ Church - 2nd Street, between
Filbert and Arch - and I peer up at
the steeple of Benjamin Franklin's
subscription lottery. Tourists around
me are peering at his grave. Both these
two remnants of Franklin's day remain:
the famed steeple his lottery built, and
the grave within which he still keeps a
repose. Nothing now moves, I notice,
except traffic and people, tourists
and branches, like those bare, ruin'd
choirs, where once the sweet birds sang.
How sweet the puddle of daunting courage
I cross. The twist of motion, the delicious
time, the splash of mirrored water along
the feet and legs. A certain trefoil of green,
with light in a certain blue, shimmers along
the land : passers-by, derelicts, squatters.
The entire small world turns. It is nothing
I've ever seen before. This statuary of
existence, every stroke and dot, is played
out before me as in a sculpture'd garden.
-
Philadelphia has its lazy streets.
I am standing near the wall along
Christ Church - 2nd Street, between
Filbert and Arch - and I peer up at
the steeple of Benjamin Franklin's
subscription lottery. Tourists around
me are peering at his grave. Both these
two remnants of Franklin's day remain:
the famed steeple his lottery built, and
the grave within which he still keeps a
repose. Nothing now moves, I notice,
except traffic and people, tourists
and branches, like those bare, ruin'd
choirs, where once the sweet birds sang.
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